Indiana Jones and the Necromancer of the Nile
by technicolor-werewolf
Summary: June, 1943: The only thing Indiana Jones hates more than Nazis is snakes, and the only thing the Joy hates more than Nazis is interlopers...but when Indy's nose for trouble lands one of her soldiers in an Ahnenerbe trap, the two find themselves forced to cooperate in a desperate race across the North African front for the fate of not just one man, but of the entire world.
1. Paging Doctor Jones

**_June 17, 1943 – Tunis, Tunisia_**

_An easy job, _they had said_…You're the expert in dealing with the Germans, _they had said_. _That second one was true, Indy had to admit, but easy? Ha. This job was looking like it'd be anything but easy. Lucky for him, he'd gotten well used to that over the years.

Dr. Jones had protested when he'd first been asked to take this job – specifically, he had protested the moment that he'd entered his office to find a sharply-dressed man sitting in _his chair_ with a thick file-folder sitting on _his desk_. "Dr. Henry Jones, Jr., I presume," the man said in an official-sounding deadpan. "Have a seat. There are business matters we need to discuss."

"Maybe you could start by letting me have _my_ seat back?" he growled. He tried to keep his temper as even as he could while he was under the dean's watchful eye, but this was just _too damn much_. "And my desk too. As you can see, I have a large stack of essays to grade and –"

"Dr. Polanski has already agreed to do your grading and take over your other duties while you are in Africa," the stranger interrupted. "The government has an assignment for you, Dr. Jones. Word has reached official ears that you have certain skills that, as _excellent_ of a professor as I am sure that you are, might be put to better use in the service of your country."

"_Africa?_" Dr. Jones said. He didn't like the sound of this at all. It was too much like 1936 with Abner Ravenwood…only this time, it looked like the Army was cutting out the middleman and coming straight to _him_. "And hang on a second, now, service of my country? What's this all about?"

The agent sighed deeply and fixed a glare on the other man. "Let me _get_ there, Dr. Jones. You have clashed with members of the SS multiple times in the last several years, giving you unique insight and experience in this area. You are also skilled in both combat and survival situations and in dealing with native peoples. Therefore, we intend to recruit you – on a temporary basis, of course – to perform an operation for us on the North African front. Hitler has not given up on his obsession with the occult, and after that whole business with the…'Ark of the Covenant' –"

("Which I'm _sure_ you still have people diligently studying," Indiana grumbled under his breath. He was liking this guy less and less as the conversation went on.)

"– your name came up as the natural choice for the job."

"Well, it doesn't sound like _I_ have much of a choice about that, does it?" he said sarcastically, giving up on getting his chair back and settling for the uncomfortable wooden chair that he kept to discourage students from staying too long – crossing his arms tightly across his stomach to keep his center balance, he tipped it back on two legs and put his feet up on the desk. The good professor, apparently, had nothing left to worry about; Indiana Jones was in the house. "What kind of job are we talking about here?"

"Our operatives in Libya have reported unusual activity around the bases of Axis-aligned resistance forces there, with many Nazi officials coming and going and expeditions being sent out to the east on a regular basis. We have reason to believe that, having failed in their efforts to obtain Christian artifacts for their Führer's cause, Himmler's _Ahnenerbe_ have secretly turned toward the legendary pagan cults of –"

"Of ancient Egypt, yeah," Indiana cut in; there was nothing else to the east of Libya, and the ancient Egyptian sorcerers sure did have a reputation for the kind of stuff Himmler was interested in. Nazis in Egypt _again_, though? God, didn't these people ever learn? "Let me guess: Whatever government agency that sent you up here wants me to go out there, find out what they're doing, and put a stop to it."

The agent sniffed in irritation at being interrupted in his report. "That is the essential aim of your mission, yes. Your cover, of course, will be your archaeology work, for which you are already very well known. If you cannot stop their activity, we would like you to at least create as much of a distraction as you can, to draw their attention away from their goal and tie up as many of their resources as possible. We hear that you are very good at creating distractions."

"Well…yeah, I guess you could say that," he admitted with a grin. Maybe he didn't like the guy, but he could still appreciate a good compliment when he got one. "All right, I guess I really am your man. So, since we're officially at war with the Germans and all, now, is the government planning to help me out any?"

"A freelancer such as yourself? I'm afraid not," the suit said, smiling for the first time in return…but with a sinister, self-satisfied smile that said _I'm better than you_ in the worst kind of way. "We can't risk being associated with you if anything should go wrong; it would put the inside agents who obtained this information in too much danger. The German SS are not known for their mercy in dealing with anyone they think they can get information out of. No, you will not be allowed to make contact with any Americans while carrying out your mission. However, there _is _a special forces unit currently wrapping up Allied activities in the region that has…a somewhat similar reputation to your own, shall we say. They are the most likely people to be of any help to you if you should happen to cross paths with them, though I would personally advise against seeking them out. Their leader is well known for completing the mission at any cost, and if you get in their way, that cost just might be you."

"I can deal with that," Indy said with a sigh, tucking his glasses away and reaching by habit for a fedora that wasn't there. It looked like it was going to be adventure time again. "…say, are any of those papers for me?"

The man pushed the entire folder across the desk, running it into Indiana's feet and forcing him to grudgingly set them back on the floor so that he could pick it up. Well played, Mr. Intelligence Man. "All of them, Dr. Jones. These are the details we have on the Germans' activities, as well as much background information as you ought to need on the subject and a check large enough to cover your expenses. Everything else is already taken care of; you need only be at the Walton Airport at 9:00 tomorrow morning. Your pilot will meet you in Hangar Six."

…And that had been that. Now here he was, stuck in Tunis with nothing but five hundred dollars in cash, a map of North Africa, his pistols and bullwhip, and a stern warning not to go looking for backup. Apparently, _he_ was expendable, while his pilot was not, and so crossing two borders through territory that had only been wrested from the Axis powers last month was what those "expenses" were for. As much as Indy preferred to work alone, joining up with this mysterious "special forces unit" was starting to look like a better and better idea by the minute. He wasn't familiar with the area, and given the suspicious looks he'd been getting from the locals, he didn't like his chances of getting one of them to guide him _out_ of trouble rather than _into_ it. Then again…

Indy pulled out the map and glanced over it. There were ports in northern Tunisia, and there were ports in northern Egypt, and five hundred dollars was more than enough to bribe his way onto an innocent-looking cargo ship. Who said he had to go by _land?_ In time-honored fashion, he pulled his hat down over his eyes, let his finger hover over the coastline, and set it down decisively before taking a look. Bizerte, huh? According to the legend, that was…40 miles or so to the north. Well, hell, even accounting for the weight of food, water, and what little gear he'd need, he could _walk_ that far in a couple of days, especially when the only alternative appeared to be going by camel.

…and he was _not_ going by camel, thank you very much.


	2. Dry Sands, Wet Work

**_A/N:_**_ As a public response to FlyingLion's question - this has absolutely nothing to do with the events and backstory of Crystal Skull (which I've never actually watched all the way through). I really don't know what's established in that film, being a firm fan of the classics, and am working completely off of the original trilogy for my history and characterization of Indiana._

**_June 17, 1943 – Bizerte, Tunisia_**

This last month had been the longest month of the Joy's life. Longer than the month she'd spent undercover as Himmler's secretary in 1942, longer than the month she'd spent Not Talking To David Oh in 1941, and even longer than the month and a _half_ she'd spent proving herself as a potential soldier through brutal daily training in 1940. The Tunisia Campaign in and of itself had been nothing short of a nightmare, and then just when the Axis forces had surrendered and she'd thought they were done, the Cobra Unit had been handed the dirty work of picking off "escaped POWs", high-ranking Axis officials who had never actually been captured in the first place but who needed to be taken out of action all the same. It was always reassuring to know that her bosses were good with cover stories, wasn't it?

The officials in question had proved to be harder to track down than even she had anticipated, and the case they were on right now was the worst of them all. Every time they got a lead, Pirelli would just vanish, again and again and _again_. Her men had already been exhausted when they'd started this chase, and the seemingly endless desert was a physical and psychological enemy in and of itself. But beyond that, the Joy couldn't shake the feeling that something just wasn't _right_. No one's wounds were healing the way they should, and more than once, their compasses had malfunctioned so uniformly and flawlessly that they'd found themselves going in perfect circles despite each and every needle pointing due north. The Fear, though completely out of his element, had finally managed to find a city three days ago, and she'd made an executive decision to keep the unit there, in an abandoned house on the city's edge, until they had at least recovered enough to function in action again. There was no point in continuing to chase Pirelli to Libya and back if they couldn't take him down when they finally did find him.

She had expected her men to welcome the opportunity to finally get some privacy, but everyone just stayed huddled together in one room, herself included. It felt safer, though she couldn't put a finger on what they all felt was threatening them. She would have asked the Sorrow to look into it if he hadn't been the one in the worst psychological condition, practically catatonic most of the time and constantly near tears when he _wasn't_ dead to the world. For weeks his English had been slipping so badly as to be almost incomprehensible, so Joy had been trying to get through to him in Russian – but that wasn't working too well, either.

"It's the pain," he would mumble every time. It was always the same words, like they were the only words he remembered. "My head…I can't think. I can't…I can't…seeing…Joy…Joy, I think I'm going _insane_."

"You're _not_," she would say, taking him firmly by the shoulders and fixing his blank, unfocused eyes with her best 'reassuring' look. "You're just tired out. It's going to be all right, Sorrow. _You're_ going to be all right. We all are."

…it probably would have been more reassuring if she had really believed it herself.

The Pain, whom she had always suspected of being the most psychically sensitive next to the Sorrow, had been complaining of bad headaches too, and even his hornets seemed disoriented and had had to be padlocked into a crate to keep them from turning on the Cobras in their confusion. Those three things together were all the evidence she needed to draw her conclusion: there was some kind of psychic interference going on. She herself hadn't been too bothered, besides just feeling thrown off and…well, _slowed_ somewhat. Her reflexes were bad, and conclusions and inspiration that would normally have just _come_ to her were proving elusive. That, she speculated, was why it had taken her this long to figure out what was going on – she was missing her…what was the word, what was the word…she was missing her _intuition_.

The Joy had to admit that, as much as it pained her to watch the interference play out, its effects on the unit made an interesting case study – the fact that whatever-it-was had so impaired her confirmed psychic as to render him absolutely nonfunctional gave her a good idea of just how sensitive everyone else was to the stuff. It was now fairly evident to her, for example, that there was definitely some kind of psychic bond between the Pain and his hornets. The Fear and the End, while not currently impaired, had been acting distressed, and she was willing to bet that if she put either of them into a combat situation they would only be about half as effective as they normally were. The Fury kept insisting that he was _just fine_, but still seemed distinctly unsettled and restless, like…like something. The Joy finally had to ask him what was up, since she was currently lacking her ability to read people like books.

"It just feels like part of me is missing," he admitted when she came to pose the question, sitting on the edge of the bed closest to his chair and watching him drum his fingers furiously against the windowsill. "Don't know what part. I keep thinking…I don't know. I just don't quite feel like myself, you know?"

"Yeah, I know what you mean," the Joy said, turning her gaze out the window to the devastated cityscape beyond. "There's something out there targeting us, Fury, and…" She hated to say it, but she had to. "I don't know what it is. All I can tell is that something…or some_one_…is messing with our minds." She tried to focus on something, anything, and chose the man sitting next to her. The Fury, she remembered deciding a long time ago, was a lot like what might happen if you could get a machine-gun to shoot explosives. He wasn't exactly precise, but he did so much sheer damage that it didn't really matter, fueled by rage so potent that it shut him completely off from the outside world and seemed to carry him unscratched through what would have killed anyone else. He required watching sometimes to keep those tendencies in check, but on the whole, he was her best fighter. It was no accident that every man in her unit had his own strength; she had handpicked them that way, and raw, manic power was the Fury's. Even off the battlefield he was pretty rough around the edges, but so fiercely loyal that she loved him all the same.

Her berserker laughed darkly, breaking her concentration. "I think we can all tell _that_ much, Commander."

The Joy felt her gaze drawn toward one building in particular. Why that was, she didn't know. Oh, she didn't know at all. "Look at me," she sighed angrily. "The _Joy_, brought so low that she can't even act as a proper leader to her unit…"

"Hey, don't talk like that," the Fury said, suddenly angry as well. "You're still the best damn soldier I know, boss, even if you _can't_ think straight."

She shot him a sulky glare that shut him up immediately. "Soldier, yes. Leader, no. Without my tactical abilities and insight, Fury, I'm just another weapon blindly following orders, a_ tool_ in the hands of…" Her line of sight had been drifting from his face to the window behind him, back to that building again. There was something about it. Something about it that just…wasn't right…

"Hey – hey, _comandante_, are you all right?" the Fear said, jumping up onto the bed next to her (and almost missing it...) "You're just –"

"Bizerte."

The Fear stared at her. "What?"

"_Bizerte_," she repeated, her head suddenly clearing of fog and everything, _everything,_ snapping into place once more. "We're in Bizerte."

The Fury gave her a look halfway between "_Materʹ Bozhiya,_ Joy's back" and "_Materʹ Bozhiya_, Joy's gone completely insane". Ha! She could read him again! "Joy…how do you know –"

"Look. Look at the skyline!" she said, getting up and pulling aside the makeshift curtain completely. "No, look past the skyline. There's water, that's the Mediterranean. And the skyline again, look at that, there's the old Spanish fort. Still standing even after the battles, and then over there…" She fixed her eyes again on the building that had drawn her subconscious attention. That's where the interference was coming from – had been coming from…it was weakening now, it was – "Fear, Fury, we're leaving _now_, before our Nazi psychic can get away from us. You're the strongest and least affected, so you'll be well enough to fight by the time we get there. He's worn himself out by keeping us out of action for the last few weeks, and now's the time to strike. The rest of you, stay here and try to focus on shaking off the effects of the psychic interference. I need this unit to be completely functional again as soon as possible."

"Nazi _what?_"

"Psychic – Joy, what are you _talking_ about?"

The Joy was already loading her gun. "Look, just get your weapons. I'll explain on the way."

The Fury nodded and jumped up to grab his Yibel' AK-43, looking more resolute and a grin starting to spread across his face as the effects of the interference started to wear off. "Yes _ma'am_."

They were almost out the door when the Joy heard something that made her stop and turn around. "Hey…Madam Commander." The Sorrow had reemerged from his catatonia, and even seemed to have most of his vocabulary back despite the pain and enervation still obviously weighing him down. "Be careful…all right? Their guy…he's _insanely_ good."

She grinned at him, relieved to see the Sorrow even partly himself again after being half-dead for so long. "We'll be careful, I promise. And we'll see how good he is with his psychic powers exhausted and a few rounds of lead in him, hey, boys?" She pulled the Fear and the Fury out the door, laughing for joy. "Come on, now. We've got a lot of ground to cover between here and where our mark's at, and we'll have to move fast if we're going to bring him down alive - yes, Fury, _alive. _I'll bet you a hundred to one that he knows where Pirelli's at, and we can't let that get away from us."

xxx

"Congratulations, you got a smile out of her," the End said when the designated three had left, patting the Sorrow gently on the shoulder; it was the first time he had said a word in almost a week. "And if the Joy is herself already, I'm sure the rest of us will be right as rain soon enough."

"I hope so," the Sorrow whispered, letting his head fall back against the wall. "It's so…I'm glad it's over."

"The Nazis have a psychic too, is that what you and Joy were saying?" the Pain said, shaking his head to try to clear it. "If you two are going to operate on the same wavelength, at least let us in on it."

"We're not on the…it's not like _that_," he replied, opening his eyes again briefly to meet the Pain's, the corner of his mouth quirking in a kind of smile. "But yes…a psychic…maybe two – one to take us down mentally, and…they must have found someone who does physical, too. That's rare."

"And if they can get _us_, they'll probably figure they can use it against the _rest_ of the Allied Forces with no problem," the Pain said. He got up and sat down again heavily on the little room's one bed. He still felt like part of him was missing, but at least the fog around his mind was clearing and his hornets seemed to be calming down somewhat. "Damn it."

The End sighed. "I suppose it was only a matter of time before they tried this kind of tactic, with everything Joy found out they were planning on trying before. It's…despicable."

"It is," the Sorrow said quietly. He had been trying to fight off the interference ever since he'd first felt it, when they had started out after Pirelli, and was now completely worn out – besides which, his head still hurt like hell every time he tried to string any meaningful thoughts together. "Why do you think I'm here? I don't _like_ fighting, but somebody's got…somebody's got to stand between them and everyone else. You know?"

"I know," the End said, shaking his head. "Believe me, I know."

The atmosphere in the house slowly began to relax as time went on, the uneasiness clearing and even the Sorrow finally showing signs of recovery. The End, feeling his energy coming back, decided to take up watch while the other two rested, and initially prepared himself to fight when he heard noise in the hall a few hours later – but no, that was the Fury's voice, complaining that he hadn't even got to shoot anything.

"Well, he got away from us," the Joy grumbled as she dragged herself back through the doorway. "I guess he wasn't completely exhausted after all…he must have known that we were coming."

"Still, at least we aren't under attack anymore," the Fear said, coming in behind her. "How have you three been holding up?"

"Fairly well," the End said cheerfully. The dark clouds had finally passed on, and he had taken the window seat so as to soak up as many of the sun's rays as he could.

"Even those two?" the Joy said, glancing around the room apprehensively and noticing the Sorrow and the Pain passed out on the bed, or at least as much of both of them would fit on the bed at the same time.

The End chuckled. "Don't worry, they're just asleep. It's been a while since any of us slept properly, you know."

"You can say that again," the Fury groaned as he stumbled in, dragging his gun behind him. "Aw, dammit, they took the bed. Can we make Pain sleep on the floor? He's too big for that bed anyway…"

"Just let him be and fight it out when he wakes up," the Joy said, yawning herself. "But you don't want to sleep next to Sorrow. His legs are long, and he kicks like a horse." The Pain, luckily, slept like a rock, which was why she always made sure that those two were next to each other when the situation called for close quarters. It had only taken one morning of waking up with bruises on her legs to make _that_ decision. "End, Fear, can you keep watch while the rest of us…" she yawned again, kicked her bedroll open, and flopped down on it. "God, I'm tired…anyway…Fear, show him what we found in the fireplace. Wake me up if you figure anything out."

"In the fireplace, eh?" the End said, far more brightly than anyone except the Fear had patience for right now. "Well now, Fear, bring it over. Let's see what we have here…"


	3. Ships That Pass In The Night

**_June 19 – Bizerte, Tunisia_**

"I should have known," Indiana groaned, kicking a piece of rubble across the empty street. "All the ports in Tunisia to pick from, and I pick the _ghost town_."

Bizerte must've been hit hard by the fighting in Tunisia – half the city was in ruins, and what _wasn't_ looked like it might fall apart if you kicked it too hard. Almost all the civilians seemed to have evacuated when faced with invasion, or whatever had devastated the place, and it looked like the armies that'd done it had moved on, too. Well – that was war for you. He idly wondered whether they'd bother trying to come back and rebuild here, or if someday, a thousand years from now, archaeologists of the future would be digging up the rubble and exclaiming over their good fortune…a forgotten relic of the Second World War. Indy was betting on the latter, to be honest. If you didn't count a few sideways glances from women hurriedly pulling their shutters closed and frightened looks from the usual generic street urchins, he hadn't actually met a single person here all day.

Here he was, then, two days out from Tunis and none the better for it, since he sure as hell wasn't going to be able to catch a boat out of _here. _He had already been down to the docks, and they were completely empty of both ships and people – so it wasn't even like he could "borrow" a fishing boat for the trip. The only plus side so far was that he _did_ have a motorcycle now, albeit a motorcycle that was full of sand and almost out of fuel… there was probably a reason that its previous owner had left that one by the roadside, where he'd gratefully picked it up halfway between the capital and this godforsaken wreck of a city. Still, he'd managed to get the grit out of the more important parts before they could do _too_ much more damage, so it ran. For the moment, anyway.

Indy reached into the bike's saddlebag for his water canteen, and then stopped halfway. The lining had caught on something and ripped since he'd last opened it, and there was a scrap of paper sticking out. _Well, what've we got here?_ These things just seemed to come _looking_ for him, didn't they…he pulled it out and unfolded it – one edge was whole, but the other was torn and jagged, like someone had just haphazardly ripped it off of something else. After a thorough search of both saddlebags for the rest of the paper (which was nowhere to be found), Indiana leaned back against the nearest intact wall and took a good look at what he had in his hands. It looked like part of a map, kind of like the one he'd brought with him. Yeah, there was Tunis, and Bizerte, and the west edge of Libya. It would have seemed perfectly normal, if there weren't notes scribbled all over it in German. Well, wasn't that swell? He'd picked up a _Nazi _bike. That wasn't dangerous at _all _around here. Well, setting aside the matter of the motorbike, the two questions at hand were "Where's the rest of the map?" and "It probably has something to do with this stupid mission, doesn't it?" From what he could make out of the awful handwriting, the answer to that second question was probably "yes", and the answer to that first question was probably "as far away from here as he could possibly get". Indy frowned, wondering what those Germans were up to now. From the looks of the writing, this was part of some kind of larger set of instructions, directions…he couldn't really tell. How had it got in _there,_ though? He could understand hiding a sensitive document that way, sure, and maybe even a map, if it were a really important one. But just a _piece_ of one, torn up like that? And if you were going to go to the trouble of hiding something in a saddlebag, surely you'd remember that it was there when you dumped your bike because it wouldn't run right anymore, wouldn't you?

Jones readjusted his fedora and revved the bike's engine (which coughed and spat out a little of the sand that was clogging it up). There had to be motor oil and gasoline left _somewhere_ in these ruins, if only leftovers forgotten or abandoned by the advancing and retreating armies. If he could clean out the rest of this machine and get the fuel tank full again, then he could just ride to the next port over and make his way to Egypt from _there_. With any luck, he'd find some answers to all those questions along the way – and something worth looking for at the end of the trip. Yep…it was definitely adventure time.

xxx

Less than a mile away, the Joy had long since given up trying to figure out what their psychic stalkers had been doing with a map of the Upper Nile and had instead given her full attention to getting her unit back in shape. "Sorrow, are you _sure_ Pirelli's still here?"

"There's nowhere else for him to _go_," the Sorrow said. He was sitting on the bed's edge and swinging his legs back and forth in an effort to encourage their regaining proper mobility. They had all finally spread out in the house, and the Joy had got the bedroom; she'd only called him in here to see if he had his powers back yet. "I'm just starting to get my medium powers back, and a little girl came and found me this morning…" he shuddered. Children's spirits were the most trusting, but the hardest for him to deal with. "She said yesterday's sandstorm wiped out what's left of the roads, and there's not a single boat left in the harbor. She didn't know anything about an Italian officer, but I can feel the psychics still here, building up their strength again like we are, and the way they've been warding us off him in particular, I'm sure he's been keeping them close. Besides, a psychic wouldn't need to keep a map around, would he?"

"Good point," she murmured, setting her hand on his shoulder when she saw him shaking. "That's a very good point. Do you know where they might be?"

"I can't quite pinpoint them yet, Joy, but I think I can point you in the right direction…"

"Well, do you think you'll be able to get their location by tomorrow?" the Joy said, lifting her hand and opening the window to survey the city below. Fighting in such a maze of destruction was dangerous enough as it was, and she didn't want any uncertainties compounding that. "Surely _one_ of the dead around here has seen him, and we can't risk waiting too long."

"I'll keep trying to reach out," the Sorrow said resolutely. He was still tired, weak, and hurting, but for her – anything. Any of them would happily _die _for the Joy, if they had to. "I promise, Madam Commander, I'll get you the information by tomorrow morning. Maybe even by tonight."

The Joy set her gaze on the expanse of sea beyond. If they couldn't get out of here soon, she might need to send a couple of her men out there soon for fresh fish and seawater to distill; they were just as stuck as Pirelli was, and their provisions almost exhausted. "Tonight…then we could strike under cover of darkness, and we certainly need all the advantage we can get," she said, thinking out loud…she turned away from the window and gave her spirit medium an uncharacteristically gentle smile. "But don't push yourself too hard, Sorrow. I still need you in fighting condition when we do find them." The poor man, he looked on the verge of collapsing again…

The Joy couldn't think of anyone _more_ different from the Fury than the Sorrow. He was precise rather than prolific, and "fighting condition" for him meant the ability to think and to reach out to the spirits of the dead, whether he was physically at his best or not. His marksmanship was excellent, but she generally had him hang back and help with tactics and intelligence, rather than taking a place on the front lines. It was really for the best, because she had never been able to convince him to kill – in spite of which he still managed to draw a softer side out of her that no one else could. Of all the Cobras, he was the most – it was hard to pin an adjective on such a shadowy man. He was…thoughtful, perhaps that was it, in every sense of the word – considerate and premeditative as well as pensive. She…liked that.

She wondered what he was thinking about now, as the Mediterranean breeze ruffled up his silvery hair to show what little was left of the natural light brown color underneath. He had a singular talent for looking very young and very old at the same time; the effect was both very useful and very…she hesitated to use the word, but it was objectively true…charming.

"I know you do," he said, breaking into her thoughts (thank God, she had been _really_ letting her mind wander, there) with a small, tired smile in return, probably wondering what on earth she was looking at him like that for. "I'll do my best, Joy. I swear it."

"Thank you," the Joy said softly, placing her hand on his shoulder again, hoping to impart some measure of confidence and comfort. "I know you will. I've got faith in you, Sorrow."


	4. Love and War

_**June 20 – Bizerte, Tunisia**_

"_Joy_…Joy…" The Sorrow looked at his sleeping commander nervously. It felt wrong to invade her space like this, but he knew she would want to know as soon as possible. "_Joy…_" She sighed in her sleep and rolled away from him – that was odd, she was a naturally light sleeper and really should have woken up the moment he opened the door, not to mention once he put the lit flashlight down next to her face. He hadn't _felt_ any of the psychic interference coming back, but it still didn't seem right. "Joy, wake up," he said, praying that she would realize it was him in time to stop her instinctive reaction, and then leaned over and gave her shoulder a firm shake.

The prayer wasn't answered; her other hand shot up and grabbed his wrist before he could let go, and before he knew it, she had flipped him flat on his back with her fingers still clamped down on him like a vise and what felt like every bone in his body still shuddering from the impact. "See…you…" The Joy was blinking sleep out of her eyes and continuing to mumble incoherently, barely awake yet and still pinning him down with a knee on his chest and a knife at his throat. "What…are you…you…oh _God!_" She jumped back from him, almost falling out of bed doing so. "_Sorrow_, you – you _idiot_! Don't ever do that! I could have _killed_ you!"

"I realize that," the Sorrow said, sitting up and scooting back awkwardly against the wall. He was very uncomfortable at sharing the bed with her, however innocuously. "I'm really sorry, Madam Commander, I – you weren't waking up for some reason, but I had to tell you, I –"

She cut him off, sticking her knife back in its holster. "God…next time just…I don't know, just don't sneak _up_ on me like that!"

"But I must have said your name six or seven times!"

Joy stared at him. "You did?"

"...yes. I did."

"Oh…" She…looked like she was blushing, though it was a little hard to tell in such low light. "I'm sorry, then…I remember hearing my name, but I think I must have…um…" The Joy shook her head. "Oh, it's too early for this. Sorrow, what _time_ is it?"

"Three hundred fifteen hours...I'm sorry to wake you up so early," he continued, "but listen, I found them. I found exactly where they're at." He reached into his pocket and pulled out the now-crumpled paper covered with the pertinent details.

"You're amazing," she said, taking the paper from him. "What…you got a map?"

"Well, I couldn't sleep, so I kept looking and looking, and I finally made contact with a British soldier who showed me exactly where they were," the Sorrow explained, watching her soft grey eyes jump back and forth over the hastily scribbled map in her hands. "He was very helpful, very detail-oriented, just…take a look. The layout of the house is on there, and everything."

"Yes…this looks good," the Joy said, sounding encouraged. She set it down in her lap and rubbed her eyes hard. "All right, then, we've still got a bunch of those pyrotechnic grenades the Fury was working on…that'll be our first move, since we need them good and disoriented. The Pain and I should be able to throw one in from that rooftop exit, and then go in after it that way. They shouldn't be able to get _back_ out past us, but if they do, the End can be at that sniping post you pointed out, and they'll just be sitting ducks up there." She checked the notes on the map and then set it down on the table. "That leaves the Fear and the Fury to block the ground-level exits in case anyone tries to make a break for it that way, and you..." She trailed off, looking away and reaching for her hair brush.

"Yes? What about me?" he said, feeling uneasy. "What do you need me to do?"

The Joy still wouldn't meet his eyes, just slowly picked up the brush and started easing the knots out of her hair so that she could pull it back. The Sorrow wondered briefly if she were planning to cut it soon; he'd never seen her grow it past her shoulders before. It was beautiful that way, at least when she let it down (practically never), but it also made her look years younger than twenty-two, and it wasn't like her to let anything get in the way of her being taken seriously. "I don't know," she said after a long pause, a torn expression on her face. "You're not ready to go back into battle."

"I'm perfectly ready," he objected, gesturing to the map. "The proof's right there."

"Recovering your powers is one thing, taking them back into combat is another," she said, shooting him a glare. "You look like you just dragged yourself out of _hell_, Sor– _ow_!" The Joy stopped with her arm halfway back to start braiding her hair. "Damn it…that must be what I pulled moving that block yesterday…"

He touched her arm gently. "Let me do it. You have to rest that, or it won't loosen up again."

She laughed but moved to sit in front of him anyway. "You're a man of surprising talents."

"Well, I had a half-sister a few years older than you," he said, smiling as he divided her hair carefully into her customary twin tails and began to braid tightly from the top so that it wouldn't come loose while she was charging around shooting Nazis. "Her hair was very dark, though. The details will show up better in yours."

"You're forgetting that I'm not supposed to know anything about your old life, Sorrow," the Joy said lightly, turning her head to present a better work surface. He couldn't feel what she was thinking, but just feeling her relax under his touch meant she'd let go of that burst of anger. That was reassuring. "Can't tell what I don't know."

"Forget I said anything, then." As he worked, a hard-to-define silence fell between them, both familiar and slightly uneasy…he wasn't sure how that could be. Sometimes he wished his ESP was just a little stronger, so he could really understand her. Joy somehow managed to lift the fog and melancholy of the spirit world surrounding him, and she was more than intriguing – she was _fascinating_. The whole unit was interconnected in a way no normal battalion could ever dream of being, but…there was something different for her and him, and always had been. He had just never been able to precisely pin it down.

It didn't take him long to finish – after seventeen years without Alina, he should have been out of practice, but the patterns still seemed to just flow naturally through his hands. The Sorrow snapped the hairband into place on the second braid and smiled slightly. "There, Madam Commander. All you need now is a weapon in your hand, and you'll be the terror of every Nazi from here to Berlin."

"Thank you," the Joy said softly, laughing a little. "You're too kind to one little soldier girl."

"No, you're much more than that," he said, and leaned down without really thinking to kiss the crown of her head.

The atmosphere shifted suddenly at that, though she didn't speak or even move. After a moment of tense silence, she stood up and took the map again, looking it over. "You can come with me and the Pain and stay on the roof as a supplement for the End," the Joy said quietly, another blush high in her cheeks. "I'll tell him to keep his primary focus on the front window; it's possible he can get a bearing on their position and maybe even take one of them down if the conditions are right."

The Sorrow nodded, already regretting that move. "Joy…I –"

She held up her hand, and he realized that she was already pulling herself into battle mode and pushing away everything that wasn't relevant to the mission at hand. In a few minutes, she probably wouldn't even remember having her hair braided at all. "Later, Sorrow – right now we've got work to do. Help me get the others up, quickly, and then we're moving out. There's no time to be lost here."

xxx

The minute the Joy saw the actual terrain where they were supposed to set up, she knew her plan wasn't going to work. While there _were_ only two doors, there was also a back window large enough to serve as an exit if need be, and that was a problem. The End couldn't see back there, and she didn't feel comfortable only leaving one man in charge of that much space.

"All right," she said, pulling her Cobras into a huddle so that she could pass on the new orders as quietly as possible. "Change of plans, boys. Fury, Fear, you're going to switch places – Fury, you're in the back now; Fear, at the front door." The Fear _did_ perform better at long-range, so it was probably better to let him just act as backup for the End anyway. "End, you're fine just as you are, just keep an eye on that front door as well, but Sorrow…you're going to have to cover that enormous back window. The Fury's going to need backup for a wall that big, and we don't need a repeat of the last two weeks, which is _exactly_ what's going to happen if one of them gets loose." Seeing him nod in agreement, she moved on to the final piece in her revised plan. "All right. Now, the roof looks okay as well, so Pain – you and I are still going in exactly as we discussed before. Understood, everyone? Good, let's get set."

As her unit took their places with the swift, silent movement of a snake in tall grass, the Joy felt her battle "high" coming on again. She'd missed it – the joy of seeing all of her men working as one, of working to bring down the Axis Powers man by man if she had to, of taking steps closer and closer toward the end of this war, knowing that she was saving precious American lives. She might have a rifle slung across her back and a grenade in her hand, but she was looking for something higher – a world that put more effort into peace than into war. The others were lost without a battlefield to fight on, but she knew that she could step off of it and lay down her gun, and still be as strong as ever. Someday the world _would_ be whole again, even if she had to put each piece back into place herself.

Next to her, the Pain crouched low to hide as much of his height and bulk as he could, covered in a softly buzzing horde of hornets who were just as eager to protect and obey him as he was to protect and obey her. If there was anyone among the Cobras who was the most dedicated to her, it was him, and she loved him for it. His namesake, his constant companion for so many years, had hardened him against enemy attack like nothing else could. The Pain was her strongman, the one she could always count on to take more than his share of the punches and still keep a level head and follow through with orders. He was the natural choice to take into battle when she needed someone at her back, which was why he was with her now. They might be outnumbered, but the enemy still had no chance against the two of _them_.

The Joy looked around – yes, the End was giving her the signal that he was lined up and ready to fire as soon as necessary. A couple of quick looks over the edge of the roof reassured her that her other three were in place…all that was left to do was to create havoc with the stun grenade and then jump into the fray. It was an ingenious little thing, really, though she wasn't entirely sure that she trusted it to work. The weapon in question was the product of a "suggestion" that her unit might be able to do something useful with a box of captured pyrotechnics materials while they were last laid up in Cairo. She'd turned them over to the Fury, on the condition that he didn't get himself blown up in the process, and, among other things, he'd hit on the idea of fusing a set of blasting caps to the magnesium charge from a regular signal flare and stuffing the whole thing into a perforated casing. Essentially, pulling out the pin ignited the charge and created a self-contained explosion bright and loud enough to disorient the enemy, but without actually doing any physical damage – and as if that weren't enough, he was still trying to figure out how to make them emit smoke, too. That man and his pyrotechnics, honestly…

She motioned to the Pain to lift up the trapdoor-style entrance, pulled the pin on the stun grenade, and lobbed it hard into the building's interior, watching it bounce down the stairs and then roll out of sight into the living quarters. They still only had about an 85% rate of successful detonation, so the Joy had already moved her hand to the backup as she counted to herself, waiting to see if it would actually go off. Seven…eight…nine…

BAM!

She laughed aloud at the cries of confusion within and dashed, hell-bent, down the stairs after the Pain. Time to take out public enemies numbers one, two, and three.

**A/N:** _Historically speaking, the flashbang grenade was not developed until the 1960s. This being Metal Gear, however, I can do what I want with the history. And who says that the Fury ever gave anybody the design, anyway?_


	5. Fight and Flight

_A/N: Though this be madness, yet there is method in 't...here's where the real fun kicks in, and all those little threads from the first four chapters begin to knit together._

**_June 20, 1943 – Bizerte, Tunisia_**

Indiana Jones normally liked to be asleep at four in the morning, but it was kind of _hard_ to do that with grenades going off one building over from the one he was trying to sleep in. Dammit, he wasn't getting paid enough to deal with this. Come to think of it, he wasn't all that sure that he was getting paid at _all_. He was going to have some very sharp words with a certain anonymous intelligence agent if and when he got back to the good old U.S. of A. in one piece.

Still, grenades going off next door wasn't something he could just brush off, so he grabbed his weapons and slipped out into the back street behind the houses – oh, no, this didn't look good at all. Indy dashed around the corner and pressed himself up against the wall, hoping he hadn't just been noticed by the two men with guns in the other alley. He immediately started looking around for an escape route; there was no way he was getting stuck in a fight _now_ – one, because he was still half asleep, and two, because he was supposed to be halfway across Libya by now, so he didn't have time to waste getting into fights. Unfortunately, a couple of suspicious-sounding voices were suddenly raised. Just his luck…he'd been spotted. There was a pause, during which Indiana started inching away from them and toward a pile of rubble that he could probably hide behind…but then he was suddenly immobilized. He shuddered as he felt…_something_…move over him, like someone was staring him up and down. _The legendary pagan cults of ancient Egypt…_Indiana swallowed hard under that invisible stare; he knew enough on the subject to remember the all-seeing eye of Horus. He wasn't sure how seriously he should take those old myths about Osiris, Lord of the Dead, but they fit right in with what Himmler's goons were supposedly trying to dig up, and – well, either way, he sure as hell hoped that he hadn't run into the Nazis two countries early.

Suddenly, he felt the gaze lift from him and heard heavy footsteps coming toward the corner at a run - Indiana drew his pistol without a second thought and fired as soon as a shape came into view, hoping to at least scare his adversary off. However, he was met immediately by return fire, which he only dodged by pulling himself up by a crevice in the wall and swinging up onto a wider ledge. Dammit, this was _not_ how he liked to start his mornings. Several shots later, it was clear that he was stuck in a firefight, and that his opponent was bent on giving chase. Indy swore angrily and kept climbing and firing back, trying to make himself as hard to hit as he could. He was about to run out of bullets, and he hadn't thought to grab any extra ammunition on his way out. Jamming his revolver back in its holster in case he needed that last bullet later, he snapped out his whip and used it to swing across to the next building and behind a piece of wall that immediately crumbled under the impact of a bullet, and then another and another, with the distinctive sound of – _shit_, a machine gun! It even sounded like an MP43 – dammit, so it _was _the Germans. This was not how he liked to start his missions, either_._ Indy grabbed his whip and sprinted along the roof he'd landed on as fast as he could at a crouch, the wall crumbling behind him as he went from the spray of bullets unfailingly aimed in his direction. The end of the roof was coming up fast – what to do, what to do…c'mon, Jones, think on your feet!

His feet, unfortunately, betrayed him: Indiana lost his footing as he suddenly ran out of building to run along, and tumbled off into a pile of straw below, flat on his back. Nothing felt broken, but he coughed and wheezed just in trying to get up to hands and knees, the breath completely knocked out of him. Crawling was his only option, continuing to duck machine-gun fire that suddenly stopped as he found a stack of bricks to hide behind, breathing heavily. It looked like he was well and truly screwed this time: his only chances for survival were to either escape his assailant's notice entirely or find a way to take him out, somehow, with that one last bullet. Indy waited as quietly as he could, hearing a hard _thud_…someone jumping off the rooftop…followed by those same heavy footsteps, coming hard and fast. He checked the revolver chamber to be sure – yeah, one bullet left – and decided that he'd rather take his chances with the gun than with running away from whatever…whoever was chasing him. He jumped out from behind the bricks and looked around for the gunner in question, squinting in the early-morning darkness. He could still hear running, but no one was in sight.

"Hey!" Indy yelled, knocking a brick off the stack to add to the noise. "Hey, I'm over here! Are you blind, or something?" The footsteps stopped, and then – there he was, the Nazi, suddenly appearing at the end of the street. From Jones' perspective, the figure was backlit – he couldn't miss. He raised his pistol, took careful aim, and fired straight at the center of the charging target. He expected the man to drop, but somehow he just kept coming…oh, damn. Indiana tried to turn and run, but suddenly found himself tackled to the ground hard and then yanked up to his feet, held too tightly to struggle or get a word of protest in. He had _no_ idea what was going on, but he had the feeling he wasn't going to like it.

xxx

The Joy came back to the central room, having finished her systematic sweep of the front half of the building, to find the Pain waiting for her. "I got Pirelli," she said, tucking her empty cartridge into a pocket and pulling out a full one from another. "Did you take care of the other two?"

The Pain shook his head. "Only one. I thought you had the other guy – there was no one else in the back, and the door was shut."

The Joy grimaced as she reloaded her rifle. "Fear said nobody went out the front, and the End didn't see anyone either, even on the roof. The other psychic must have headed out the back…I hope to God that Fury took him out."

"C'mon, it's the _Fury_," the Pain said, but he sounded nervous.

"And the _Sorrow_. Who _knows_ what happened?" the Joy said, swinging her weapon around smoothly and already heading to the back of the house at a jog. _Stay on track, stay on track, stay on track. This mission isn't over yet, Joy, the other psychic could be anywhere now. Don't you dare let yourself get distracted._

The Joy burst through the back door, only to see the Fear and the End standing in an otherwise empty alley. "Where're Fury and Sorrow?" she demanded, a horrible feeling rising up in her chest.

"Gone when we got here," the Fear said, eyeing his commander uneasily. "I heard yelling, but all in Russian, so I couldn't understand –"

He was cut off by the appearance of the Fury at the edge of their flashlights' reach, half-dragging and half-carrying another man into the narrow alley. "What did you catch?" the Joy said in Russian herself, running up to him and grabbing him by the collar to snap him out of what was left of his battle rage.

"Pirelli's backup, I think," the Fury growled, shaking his head and breathing hard. "Sorrow saw him 'round the corner, and when I went to check it out he shot at me, so I…" He stopped and stared, looking like he was counting the people standing in the alley. "Oh god, don't tell me he wandered off."

"Who?"

"Sorrow. I told him to watch the door, and went after this –"

The Joy froze at the very mention of the Sorrow's name, even though she knew, somehow, even before he'd said it, exactly what was going on. No. No, no, no, no, _no! _"You told him to – _did you see anyone come out that door before you left?_"

"No. This guy just showed up out of the –"

"Fear," she snapped, switching smoothly to English so that everyone could understand the situation. "Sorrow and the second psychic are missing. _Find them._" The Fear dashed off into the early morning darkness, and the Joy snatched the Fury's prize out of his arms and pinned him to the wall with one hand, reaching for her Little Lady M2 with the other. "Talk," she said in hard, clipped Italian, too angry to even try to approach the situation rationally. "_Now_." When all she got was a blank stare, she switched to German and jammed the snubnose pistol's barrel hard into his throat. "I said _talk!_" she barked. "Are you with Pirelli? _Answer me_, or this fires through your jugular, carotid, trachea, palate, sinus cavities, and brain in _five seconds!_"

"Hey now, I don't know anything about this Pirelli guy," the stranger said hastily, trying to pull back from the cold steel against his vitals. His eyes moved sideways as he did so, and Joy followed them instinctively to a motorcycle leaning against the wall – a very familiar motorcycle. She'd seen those plates before, the last time they'd thought they had almost caught Pirelli back in Kebili. Kebili to Bizerte was a _long_ way for a bike to get on its own, and the way he'd looked at it, like it was going to get him in trouble…His German was a little off, yeah, but with this group, that didn't mean a thing. So the Fury was right – Pirelli had a little insurance policy, huh? Something just far enough outside his little huddle to stay off the Sorrow's radar. That son of a _bitch_.

The Joy applied more pressure with her gun and pushed the Nazi's shoulder harder into the wall behind him, forcing his feet off the ground. "Nice try, but not very convincing," she snarled. "Keep talking and change that tune, and I _might_ let you live." She wanted to kill him anyway, right now, without even letting him _try_ to keep lying. Shoot him, stab him, disembowel and dismember him, and then strip the flesh from his bones, dice up every _ounce_ of meat and vitals, and throw the whole lot into the _ever-cussed sea,_ even if such a man _would_ only poison the fish. _Nobody_ went after one of her Cobras, and the Sorrow – the Sorrow…she had no idea what she was going to do without him. The Joy didn't remember ever having lost her temper like this before, not in front of her men, but – just having him gone would throw her entire team off balance, and with Pirelli's psychic still out there, she needed him now more than _ever_, as a soldier, as – as _everything_, and – she had to get him back. There was absolutely no question about that. As badly as she wanted to rip this worthless bastard to shreds for getting the Sorrow captured in the first place, right now he was the only one with the information she needed to get him back again. No. She had to leave him alive.

At least, for now.


	6. Getting To Know You

**June 20 – Bizerte, Tunisia**

Indiana swallowed hard. He would have tried to push the pistol away from his throat, but the little girl holding him up was so unnaturally strong that he had the feeling it would have just gotten him killed. What was she, some kind of freak? She didn't look like she was any older than twenty, but here she was ordering around men twice her age, and…no, there was definitely something off here. She might have been using German on him, and the madman who'd dragged him over here might have been using a German _gun_ on him, but she certainly wasn't acting or talking like a Nazi. She wasn't uniformed and, as far as he could tell, none of the men around her were, either; her German was almost perfect – it had a slight French accent in it that made it sound Swiss, was all – but her _English _was native beyond a doubt, though British or American he couldn't quite say; and if he wasn't mistaken, that had been Russian they had all just been yelling in, too. And Pirelli…that couldn't be Mussolini's _general _Giacomo Pirelli, could it? The Nazis were hardly going to put a hit out on _him_. Something had fallen into place behind her eyes when she'd seen him look at the Nazi motorbike, something that probably wasn't too favorable to the Nazis, which meant… The more pieces of this puzzle he got into place, the less he was liking the way it looked, which was that he'd just managed to run afoul of that "special forces unit" he'd been warned about.

Indy coughed as well as he could around the pressure on his windpipe and switched to English in the hopes of getting her to realize that he wasn't a threat. "Now, see here, missy –"

He wasn't exactly sure what happened next, except that suddenly he was flat on his back again, his ears were ringing, and the girl had her foot planted firmly on his chest and what really did look like a German semiautomatic (stolen?) aimed at his head. "_You_ 'see here', _scumbag,_" she hissed at him in what he now presumed was American English. "Let's start over, shall we? You're going to tell me what you were doing shooting at _my_ backup man, and why you felt the need to create a distraction so that _Pirelli's_ backup man could make a run for it, presumably taking _my medium_ with him. And you're going to start talking _now_."

"I told you, I don't know a thing about Pirelli," Indy said, staring uncomfortably at the rifle in his face. "I woke up when the grenade went off, went out to check it out, and next thing I know, there's a couple guys with guns out in the back alley. For all I know, they're more Nazis, so I –"

"_Explain._"

"Hey, kid, I really think we're on the same side," he said, holding up his hands uneasily. "I'm not a Nazi, I swear. I got sent over here to track some of 'em down, actually. I'm an American too – the name's Jones. _Dr._ Jones if you want to get fancy, but just "Indiana" would be fine by me."

The girl stared at him down the barrel of her gun. "_You're_ Indiana Jones."

"…I see my reputation precedes me."

"Indiana Jones…God. That explains everything," she growled, still not stepping off his chest or letting up the rifle. "Foolhardy, womanizing, smart-mouthed, and _always_ in the wrong place at the wrong time, that's what I've been hearing about you."

Damn it. Wrong reputation. "Did they tell you about the part where I'm always getting in Herr Himmler's way?"

"Word did trickle up about the Ark of the Covenant," she said grudgingly. "Is _that_ why you're here and not back in the States, nice and safe, where you can't get anybody _kidnapped?_"

"At the moment I'm supposed to be figuring out what the Nazis are doing in Egypt," he said. "I was kind of hoping I could get a boat out of here –"

"Not happening."

"Yeah, I know," Indy sighed, rolling his eyes. Did she really think he was that stupid?

She poked him with the rifle, rather more menacingly than he would have been comfortable with even at the best of times. "Let's go back to where you saw my men in the alley, shall we? The Fury says that you shot at him."

"Well, _yeah_, I did!" he growled, pushing the barrel out of his face as it came dangerously close to his right eye. That must have been the assailant with the gun and the superhuman determination. 'Fury' certainly suited him. "If somebody with a gun comes running after me, I should _think_ I'm within my rights to defend myself!"

She shoved the barrel right back. "Irrelevant. Continue."

Indy huffed. "Well, he shot back at me, and then I jumped up the wall and shot back at him, and then he shot back at me and started chasing me, and…"

"And in short, you drew him away from his designated post by engaging him in combat in such a way as to make him think you were an adversary," she snarled, cutting him off and holding up a hand to also cut off the beginning of an apology from the madman.

"Commander, I…" 'the Fury' (what was up with these names?) started again.

"Hush, Fury," she snapped, resting the gun's barrel under Indiana's chin and looking up at her soldier. "It wasn't your fault. If it was anyone's fault besides this idiot's, it was _mine_ for stationing him back there – he should have been at the front where the End could keep an eye on him. You were doing your duty by leaving him where you thought he could handle the situation while you played to your own strength…" The girl trailed off, fixing a stare in the Fury's direction. "Fury, did you know you're bleeding?"

"Huh?" There was a pause. "Oh…oh, yeah, I think Jones here did actually hit me at one point. He's got lousy aim, though, it's just in the arm."

"My aim is not _lousy_, thank you very much," Indy grumbled – "_Ouch!_" She'd just stomped hard on his chest.

"Just make sure to take care of the wound as soon as you can," she sighed, turning away and glaring at the ground next to his head, which would have been buckling and caving if her line of sight was as strong as her hands. "God…I _knew_ I shouldn't have brought him along! I don't know what I was thinking. I should have told him to stay back at base where he would have been _safer_."

"Stop second-guessing yourself, Joy," said somebody Indy couldn't see. If he didn't know better, he could have sworn it was an old man's voice. "Remember, this is a very strong psychic we're dealing with, whose powers we don't fully comprehend. There's no guarantee at all that the Sorrow would have been any better off back at base than he would have been here with us."

"I don't want to hear it, End," she said darkly. Psychics…Jesus. He didn't want to believe it, but after everything he'd seen before, and then those invisible eyes he'd felt on him…well. Real, or not, he _really_ didn't like this.

He heard running footsteps, and suddenly the rifle was removed from his face. "Well? Where is he? What did you find?" 'Joy' demanded. Why _she_ was called Joy, Jones couldn't imagine. Maybe he'd luck out and live long enough to find out.

"There wasn't much _to_ find…but there was definitely a vehicle parked a few streets over," somebody said, wheezing slightly. A few streets over…just far enough away not to be heard, apparently. "That's all, _comandante_. The tire tracks were pretty fresh, they went off to…there's a road clear on the east side of the city, and it looks like they took that."

"That's _all?_"

"Yeah…Joy...I'm sorry."

"No," she said angrily. "Don't be. You did your best….we all did. We got Pirelli and at least _half_ the psychic problem, didn't we? There's just a change of plans now, that's all."

"This change of plans involves letting me go back to Nazi-chasing on my own, right?" Indy said, wondering when she was going to take her foot off of him. Not only did he prefer to work alone, he'd already figured out one thing: no amount of help he could get from these guys could be worth having their leader mad at him, little girl or no.

"Oh, no, not at all," Joy said, leaning down and fixing a glare on him. "It's your fault that my unit is short a man, so you're going to fill that gap until we get him back. You're coming with us, Jones, whether you like it or not." She stepped off at last, shoving off hard with her foot and knocking the breath out of him again as she walked away. "They can't travel very fast with all that sand on the roads, so they can have their head start. We'll wait for dawn so that we can get a better look at what happened here."

For a moment, Indy just laid where he was, disoriented, but then an old man – god, how old _was _he? – came over and helped him to his feet, addressing him gravely in a British accent. "Well, since nobody else is going to say it, I suppose I should," he said, laying his hand on Indiana's arm. "Welcome to the Cobra Unit, Dr. Jones."

Wait. _Cobra?_ Indiana mentally groaned…the universe just hated him, didn't it? _Snakes_. Why'd it always have to be _snakes_?


	7. Of Short Time and Shorter Fuses

_A/N: Posting early because I'm leaving town for the Mardi Gras weekend! See you cool cats when I come back Wednesday with Chapter 8!_

**_? ? ?  
_**

When the Sorrow woke –

No. He did not wake.

This place was no physical reality, he immediately knew that much. He stood alone, between the banks of a wide and shallow river. Its water flowed smoothly around his knees, and his feet were caught fast in the muck and silt of the riverbed. Overhead and all around was dark and shadowy, like a painting not yet completed. The Sorrow stood and watched the dark water, watched as it grew clear and cloudy again in long, steady cycles. It was like watching the seasons come and go.

_Time is a fascinating thing, is it not?_

The voice spoke directly into him, but it was not his. The Sorrow had dreamed, and even dreamed prophecies, but this was neither; this place was real, and he was not alone here. He began to form an answer in his mind, but found that he could only listen.

_It is like a river, yes, very much like a river, don't you agree? No man can stop it, and all mankind is caught between its banks. A man may only look to see what has gone before him; although some…there are some who may look at what the water they are standing in has yet to touch._

He found himself turning gently at the waist as shadowy figures began to materialize him around him, shades at once familiar and unrecognizable. Just as gently, he was returned to his former position, and then the shadows dissipated and he was alone once more.

_Yes…time is like a river. For a moment, man moves with it, like a boat floating along its surface, but he has only his allotted period there. No more and no less. He may row against it as fiercely as he can, but time is unstoppable, and flows in one direction only. But what if…_

Everything around him began to fade into darkness, until all that was left was the sound and sensation of the water flowing around him, from past to present to future.

_What if that direction could be reversed?_

**_June 20, 1943 – Bizerte, Tunisia_**

The Joy leaned back hard against the stone wall and allowed herself the briefest rest in which to catch her breath and put her thoughts together. Dawn would be within the half hour now, since the sun rose early so close to the equator…she needed to question their wayward archeologist further in the meantime. Once the sun rose, the house, Pirelli's bike, and the area around the tire tracks that the Fear had found would all need to be searched, and they would need verification on their two hits and a way to dispose of the bodies…all the usual procedures. They weren't really used to assassinations yet, but she knew her boys could probably still take care of it all without much direction. Once the interference had stopped, this had really been straightforward up until Jones had entered the picture…

"Jones," she said flatly, leaving her tired eyes closed. He couldn't have gone far. "Get over here and explain yourself."

"I thought I already did," he grumbled. Yes, he was standing right there. "Could _you_ explain why you're not allowing me to complete the mission I was sent on?"

Her eyes snapped open and she turned a stern look on him. "Because I outrank you, that's why." The Joy could already tell that she was going to have problems with his attitude, and the look on his face was only confirming that.

"Well, excuse _me_, but I don't think I'm exactly under your purview," Jones said testily.

She ignored his tone and continued as neutrally as she had begun. "Who was it that sent you over here to "chase Nazis", Jones?"

"That's _Dr._ Jones, and I think it was the Office of…uh…Strategic something or other." He waved his hand vaguely. "They weren't real keen on giving me details."

"It's pretty clear _why_, if you're going to give them such a bad name," the Joy said forcefully. _Donovan, you son of a…you could have at least __**warned**__ me that you were sending him in here._ "I'm afraid I must inform you that as a member of the OSS, Jones, _however _temporary you may be, you are now subject to its chain of command, of which you are at the bottom, and of which _I_ am not." She paused just long enough to let that bit work its way through his thick skull, but not quite long enough for him to think of a response. "In short, you may not have been directly assigned under me, but until I get any orders to the contrary I'm pulling rank on you and declaring that you _are_. Got it?"

The good doctor folded his arms. "So in other words, I'm shit outta luck, huh?"

She gave him a wry smile. "That sums it up pretty well, yeah." She noticed the looks on the other Cobras' faces, and half-chuckled before she resumed her commanding tone. They got so jealous about her, sometimes. "But don't get any ideas, Jones. You're no part of my unit, just an auxiliary, and an unwelcome one at that. You're only staying on because _I_ need manpower and because _you_ need to stop getting in my way."

Jones rolled his eyes. "And wouldn't that be easier if I weren't under your feet?"

"_Au contraire_. I need you where I can keep an eye on your movements and nip any counterproductive tendencies in the bud, so to speak." She picked up her rifle and wiped away a little soot that had become evident in the light of the false dawn, to drive her point home. "My terms are simple: cooperate in our mission, obey my orders, and don't antagonize my men. On my part, you'll be reasonably well-taken care of, and once this is all over I'll let you go back to whatever they sent you over her to do. That's the deal. Take it or leave it, and by _leave it_ I mean _leave Africa_, possibly in a body bag."

He lifted up his hat and scowled in what was presumably supposed to be an intimidating manner. "Look here, kid, I don't appreciate death threats."

"Oh, I'm not saying _we_ would kill you," she said calmly. "It's just hard to tell which parts around here are safe for Americans at the moment, and you're not very good at pretending to not be American."

"I'm pretty sure I had you fooled for a few minutes there," Jones said, quirking his eyebrows.

"_Only_ for a few minutes," the Joy snapped, her temper flaring up again at the memory of that first burst of…god, how stupid could she _get?_ Her philosophy for the Cobras was to take emotion and make it serve a lethal purpose, and here she was letting her own emotions jerk her around like a puppet. She couldn't let personal feelings cloud battlefield decisions, not if she wanted to see the mission through. "And I was not at my rational best. By the way, your German is terrible."

"Well, thank you _so_ much for the heads-up. Next time I find myself with a pistol in my throat, I'll practice my German first."

She scowled at _him_, now. "I'm going to tape that smart mouth shut if you don't shut it yourself," the Joy said, jabbing him in the chest with her finger and trying to swallow her anger at Jones, the Nazis, herself. The sun was coming up properly now, casting long shadows down the alley. She had other things to be thinking about, more important matters to turn her mind towards. "Don't even answer that. And I _am_ going to get a full explanation out of you later. All right, Fear and…" Oh, damn it. The Sorrow being gone was completely messing up her usual divisions of labor. "…mm. Fear and Fury, go take a second look at those tire tracks and perform a complete search of the surrounding area." They weren't such a bad team, she supposed – one to check for information and one to check for enemies – and they did work well together when they weren't arguing. She didn't even know how they were such good friends, as much as they _did_ argue, but then, it was in the Fear's nature to annoy everyone else as much as he possibly could, and the Fury simply happened to have the shortest fuse around.

"If you really think there's anything there I didn't catch the first time," the Fear sighed before seeing her expression, which made him switch tones immediately. "…but there might be. My night vision's not perfect, after all." The Fear was her scout and always the one she sent in first, when she had a choice – he had a background in guerrilla fighting and a paranormal ability to see in the dark, which together gave him a special talent for both finding and setting traps and ambushes. Though he was an excellent soldier nonetheless and would never admit to it, he was named after his own fear of unknown factors and direct confrontation rather than his ability to instill fear in everyone else, formidable as that was. Yellow eyes, long forked tongue, double joints that he could dis- and relocate with no problem at all, and a fondness for hallucinogens…he was pure shock value from head to toe, and it _was_ amusing to use him as such when the situation allowed it. Right now, though, she needed him for his eye for detail. She needed any clue she could get her hands on, no matter how small.

The Joy tried to think of the next task at hand, trying to fight the drifting tendency her mind was developing. It felt like she'd had a chair suddenly pulled out from under her brain…Recon. They had to do recon here, too. "Pain, you and I are going to go back through the house and check it for any clues as to what exactly was going on here, starting with Pirelli's motorcycle –"

"_My_ motorcycle," Jones cut in indignantly when he saw her gesture to it.

The Joy folded her arms. "Oh really? Because that's the same bike associated with Signore Pirelli. You know, the one you didn't know from Adam."

"Hey, I had no idea it was his," he said. "I just found it on the side of the road, and I was tired of walking, so I cleaned out enough grit to get it started and rode the rest of the way here. And there's nothing on it, I already checked."

She gave him an exceptionally unimpressed look. "Well, we'll just have to check again. End, I'm sorry to make you the baby sitter here, but would you please stay out here with Jones and keep him from getting in the way?"

"I would like to make it known that I resent…"

"Noted," the Joy said, cutting Jones off with a look. "Fear, Fury, off with you. Come on, Pain, let's get started on this bike."

She needed something to distract herself, to keep her mind busy. As long as there was work in front of her, it took precedence over everything else.


	8. Three Blind Mice

**_June 20, 1943 – Bizerte, Tunisia_**

Indy folded his arms across his chest and resumed leaning against the wall and sulking. This was _not_ how it was supposed to work. Sure, he'd worked with women before, but not with _this_ kind of woman. Hell, you couldn't even call her a woman – she still had all her freckles and no chest. He wasn't even sure that she was out of her teens. Kind of like when he'd first met Marion.

Not to insinuate that he had any designs on the kid, hell, no! She was cute, but not cute enough to risk _that_ minefield. Besides, he wasn't exactly twenty-six anymore…he had to draw his lines in the sand _somewhere_. "So what's the story on the codenames?" Indy said, addressing the old man sitting calmly next to his feet but pulling his hat off and staring directly up at the sky. "Something with that much of a pattern, there's gotta be a story behind it."

"They were the Joy's idea," the old guy…uh…what was his name, 'the End', said simply. "They reflect the emotions that we carry with us into battle. A man your age, you must have served in the Great War, didn't you?"

Jones sighed. "Yeah, I did." "Worst years of his life" was the understatement of the century.

"Then you know the difference between a soldier and a man with a gun." The End sighed deeply in return, and Indiana suddenly realized that he'd picked the wrong person to ask. He could be waiting a _long_ time for a coherent answer. "The soldiering life is in our blood, Dr. Jones, our blood and marrow. I myself have been in His Majesty's army for about sixty years now, I believe it is…the time does pass so irregularly when one gets old, you know."

"No, not really," Indy said under his breath. And he'd thought _he_ was getting old…talk about putting age in perspective.

"Well, one day, you will," the End said, smiling a little. How had he _heard_ that?! "In any case…to return to the point. We can't help but carry that warrior spirit with us always, and so she thought it fitting that we take its essence, our identities, for our names. For example, I am," he paused and pointed to the weapon he was disassembling, "a sniper by choice, interest, and many, many years of training. You can also see that I am quite advanced in years, and between the two, I came to terms with death long ago. That is why they call me the End; I approach each encounter as either the end of my target or the end of myself, equally content at heart with either outcome." A long and almost unbearable silence (unbearable, at least, for Indiana, who was still kind of confused) fell between them as he seemed to ruminate on what he had just said. "Does that make sense?"

"I suppose…" He was suddenly less interested in what the old man was saying and more interested in what the kid and the giant were doing to the motorcycle. "Hey, I told you I already checked those! The only thing in the saddlebags was some piece of a map under the lining."

The Joy stopped dead in the middle of pulling the lining out and turned back to look at him. "Map? Did you keep it?"

Indy sighed. "No, I used it for kindling, Little Miss Joy. _Yes_, I kept it, what kind of agent do you think I am?"

"An extremely irresponsible one," she snapped. "Well, where is it now?"

"Dunno. Check what you already pulled out of there, I think I put it in with the…yeah, there."

Her eyes flickered back and forth over the shred of map – Indiana could almost hear the gears turning in her head as she looked away and crossed back to them. "End. Give me the one we found in Pirelli's other place."

"Well, I'll be damned," Indy said, looking at the two pieces next to each other. "Same map, huh?"

"Same map, but with the middle burned out," the Joy said, brow furrowing. "If we had that…but he was trying to get rid of this piece for some – no…maybe…but…"

This could get really old really fast if he didn't give her some kind of push to say what she was _actually thinking_ and not just the words in between. "What was bothering me," he said, "is what that torn piece was doing sewn up in the lining. I mean, if you're trying to destroy something, you're not going to _keep_ part of it, are you?"

"He didn't," she said, handing both pieces to the old man and standing back up suddenly. "He didn't keep it, it was _planted_ by somebody else who wanted us to find it. The piece in the fireplace was probably a plant too, I bet you anything. I knew it was too _easy!_"

"Hold up, time out," Indiana said, holding a hand up. "You're saying somebody was using this Pirelli guy to get you to find that?"

"I'm saying this was a _trap!_" she growled, shoving his hand aside. "Why didn't I _see_ it? What the hell were the chances we were going to wind up in the same place as Pirelli? They weren't _protecting_ him, they were using him as _bait! _Pain, go find the Fear and the Fury. Obviously we're up against a larger group than just one officer and two psychics, and if there was a trap here, there might be one _there_, too."

Now Indiana was just plain confused. Okay, so Pirelli was bait in a trap for the Cobra Unit, he could understand that much since there seemed to have been a plan all set and ready to abduct someone. But if that was the motivation, why were they supposed to find the map _too_? This was not how it worked. He was supposed to be Holmes, not Watson, and he had no intention of allowing that state of affairs to continue. "Mind if I take a look at that?" he asked the End, who handed him back the two pieces of the map without protest. He'd thought he'd seen…yes, he had. Several neat lines of hieroglyphics lined the right-hand side of the piece that was partly burned out across Libya, partly covering Egypt and trailing all the way down to Ethiopia, following the course of the River Nile.

"Hey, uh…Joy?" His instinct was to call her "kid", but everyone else was calling her "Joy" and she looked like she wanted to punch him in the face every time he called her anything else, so that seemed to be the safest thing to use at the moment. "Just how closely did you look at your piece of the map?"

"Pretty closely, but we couldn't figure it out," she said, turning back and folding her arms. "Why, do you have any idea what all those little scribbles mean?"

Indy sighed. "They're not _scribbles_, they're hieroglyphics – you know, the ancient Egyptian writing system. I can't read them properly, if that's what you mean, but I know a guy in Cairo who can."

"Cairo, huh?" she said, a tight smile getting the better of her overall grim expression. "Good, because that's where we're headed anyway. It's the only OSS outpost over here, and I need to call in a favor or two." The Joy paused. "Didn't you say you were going that way, Jones?"

"Yeah. I was told there were some Nazis stirring up trouble over there, maybe looking for the remnants of some of the ancient Egyptian cults to take back to Himmler for investigation."

"Cults, what kind of cults?"

"Hell if I know." Jones was focused on the hieroglyphs, looking for any symbol he recognized. "Mind getting my notebook? I've got a few of the glyphs copied down in there, it might be enough to get an idea of the meaning."

She kicked a rock across the alley, drawing his attention back to her. There was a grim smile etched across her face that suddenly made her seem twice her age and three times more dangerous than any Nazi he'd ever fought. "Anything to know what we're up against. Tell me where it is."

"In the next house over, next to my cot," Indy said, returning uneasily to the map. At least with this, he knew what he was doing, but that girl was a total mystery. "You'll know it when you see it."

When the Joy came back with his notebook, she simply dropped it in his lap and started to head back into the building. "I'm going to go check in here. There's got to be some kind of connection, some clue we missed."

The End looked at her with concern. "Do you want me to –"

"_No._ I've got this, End. Stay here and make sure nothing happens while I'm busy," she snapped, and stalked off into the house.

"Hell's her problem?" Indy said, looking over at the old man.

"The Joy can be quite…" The End paused, searching for the right word. "Touchy, at times. She likes to feel like she's got everything well under control. And right now, she doesn't."

"Think it's just that, huh?" he said, flipping through his notebook for the page he wanted. "I dunno…she must really care a lot about you guys to get so bent out of shape over this."

The End smiled. "Yes, she does. I don't think you can truly comprehend it, Dr. Jones, but in many ways…we are her sons."

_Sons._ That was a pretty weird way to look at it, though Jones didn't say so. He was too busy moving back and forth between the markings on the map and in his journal, trying to see what he could match up. "Sons. Got it. Right…" He paused, having suddenly found two that corresponded exactly.

…oh, now _this_ was interesting.


	9. An Offer You Can't Refuse

_A/N: To readers of my other Cobra fiction – the details revealed in this chapter are (finally!) definitive personal-canon for The Sorrow's background and carry over into all other works. And a historical note – while I have found no evidence either way concerning the presence of a Christian Communist group in 1930s Munich (and have thus simply invented one), Hr. Himmler did indeed make a personal inspection of the Dachau concentration camp in 1936. There are photographs. It's not pretty._

**_June 20, 1943, 8:00 am – c. Al Fahs, Tunisia_**

This time, the Sorrow did wake.

Before trying to move, he stopped to take in his surroundings. He was blindfolded, his hands tied together behind his back, his legs tied – chained? – individually. He tried to reach out with his sixth sense, but found it blocked as if he were seated inside a box. He was still dealing with some psychic influence, then. The Sorrow last remembered seeing and then sensing someone in the street behind them, the Fury taking off into the darkness, and then…gunshots…the darkness swallowing him up…but he himself was not wounded. The only discomfort he felt was from the jolting and jostling of what must be movement along an ill-maintained road. The most likely explanation was that he had been taken prisoner and that now his captors were on the move. Unfortunately, there was only one way to know for sure.

"Ah, good morning, little bird!" a voice said with all the tenderness of a hawk addressing its prey when he forced his body back and forth both to test his bonds and to try to catch someone's attention. "Early riser, aren't you?" He made no reply, waiting to give anything away until he had some useful information of his own. At the moment, all he knew was that he was being spoken to in unnaturally cheerful German. "And a quiet one, too, I see. You've no reason for complaint, my dear man. On the whole I'd say he's been treated quite well, don't you think, Leibniz?"

"Very well," said a second voice. "There's not a scratch on him. He's practically in mint condition."

"Perhaps it's the blindfold that he doesn't like." It was removed very gently and his glasses replaced. "Hmm, yes. I think it was the blindfold."

Two men: one middling height and stocky, distinctive scar across the brow, Caucasian, but dressed as an Arab; one a little taller and exceptionally thin, sinister aspect, European clothing with a swastika embroidered in red on the lapel of a black coat. The thin one held the blindfold, so he was the one with the unaccented German; the other spoke with an Austrian accent and a mild lisp. Two benches along the sides of the interior, the floor scuffed and scattered with sand and road-dust, a kerosene lamp dangling from the ceiling, no windows that he could see, one door, which he was facing, of a type to suggest that he was in the back of a truck. The Sorrow tucked this image into a mental file folder in the back of his mind; it held many like it.

The tall one motioned to the other – Leibniz – to sit down, and took a seat on one of the benches himself. "Now that you can see us, perhaps you would be more willing to talk?"

"About what?" the Sorrow said, to check that everything was in working order. It was. They certainly _were_ treating him well, which with the Nazis was never a good sign. It meant he was important and they knew it.

"Oh, anything and nothing," the nameless one said dismissively – "Oh, no, oh dear. Where are my manners, Leibniz? We ought to exchange introductions with our guest. This is Professor Leibniz, a man of some skill in the paranormal sciences, and I myself am Herr Braun, a man of some influence in certain circles interested in the paranormal sciences. Yourself?"

They went over a particularly large rock and all three of them, plus the lamp, swayed dangerously from side to side. Paranormal sciences. Leibniz was more than likely one of the psychics who had been following them around – hence the Arab disguise. He must have been the one responsible for short-circuiting his consciousness, as it were; the psychic signature he had left on the mental box around him felt familiar. "Third Geneva Convention, Article Five," he said firmly.

"I beg your pardon?" Braun said, feigning innocence very poorly.

" "Every prisoner of war is required to declare, if he is interrogated on the subject, his true names and rank, or his regimental number"," the Sorrow quoted from memory, having had each and every one of the conventions' full texts drilled into his head in several different languages. _Thank you, Joy._ "However, I have none of the above, and therefore no answer to give you."

Braun laughed without letting his innocent tone slip. "Don't be so hostile! You've no reason for it, have you? Surely, you must at least have a name. No man can be born without one these days."

"I was born with one, yes," the Sorrow said, closing his eyes. Something was beginning to probe at the back of his mind, probably Leibniz, so he needed to reinforce the walls he had built around his knowledge and his memories. No matter _what_, they couldn't use him as a source of information, and blocking those advances was the best he could do without the ability to get to his L-7 tablet. Suicide was not the most preferable option, but it was better to never see the rest of his unit again than to betray them. Even the Joy. Especially the Joy. "However, it has since been erased. I'm sorry to disappoint you, Herr Braun, but you have captured a man who does not exist."

"Disappoint? No, you intrigue me," Braun said, keeping up his cheerful pretense. The Sorrow didn't like it at all.

"Let's not play games," he said, turning an intense look on Braun now that he was satisfied of his mental security. If there was one thing the Sorrow could pride himself on, it was the strength of his mind. "You already know who I am, and I'm fairly sure that I already know who you are. Ahnenerbe, am I right?" What _else_ would a German interested in paranormal sciences be doing coming after him?

"Correct," Braun said, dropping the over-sweet tone for a conversational one, with…overtones of superiority complex. The Sorrow had run into his kind before, usually right before the Joy grabbed them from behind and choked them until they passed out and could be dragged off for interrogation or negotiation purposes. It generally didn't do much about the superiority complex – in the SS, at least, they were too well-conditioned for anything to break their pride – but they _were_ slightly more bearable when they couldn't talk. "And you are Cobra."

He inclined his head. "Correct."

"Did you know that it has been almost impossible to collect any information on your unit?" Braun said, still conversational. He was either very well trained or sociopathic…possibly – no, probably – both. "Even eyewitness reports conflict with each other as to your number and kind. A number of demoralizing rumors have begun to spread about the _men who cannot die_, and Herr Himmler doesn't like that at all. It contradicts our own propaganda, you see, and has even begun to overcome it – and we can't have that."

There were a substantial number of things that the Sorrow _wanted_ to say about how little he cared for how much he was annoying Heinrich Himmler, and how much he was indeed _glad_ to be doing it. The head of the _Schutzstaffel_ probably didn't remember the Soviet political prisoner who had been pointed out to him during his inspection of Dachau and whom he had held up as an example of the ultimate threat to the Reich and to the _master race_ – genetically, a non-Nordic Slav and one full quarter Jewish; socially, a convicted Communist and outspoken denier of eugenic principles; mentally, a reputed madman subject to mania, depression, and hallucinations; and morally, a firm adherent to the Christian superstition, that most disgusting derivative of Judaism. The Sorrow closed his eyes again, tightly, and pushed it all as far to the back of his mind as he could, behind those walls to where they couldn't see it - he could feel Leibniz teasing it out already, and flashbacks were the last thing that he needed interrupting his concentration, now or ever. If they fully got their hands on those memories…just the thought of it unsettled him. Unable to rest, the constant presence of the sorrowful dead keeping him awake at night and the taskmasters driving him forward all day…torture, blood-sport, beatings, just because the guards got bored…watching friends throw themselves into the path of death rather than go on, contemplating it himself…_together, Sorrow. Pull yourself together. Get him out of your head._ He pushed back hard and noted in satisfaction, looking up, that Leibniz was wearing a sour, pained face now. Good, he'd done a little damage of his own.

Braun didn't even seem to notice the psychic struggle going on…one of those that liked the sound of their own voice. Yes, exactly the kind of person that the Sorrow had pinned him as. "We were rather hoping," he continued, "that you might be kind enough to shine a little light on the details about your group for us…"

"Third Geneva Convention, Article Five," the Sorrow repeated as he threw up another barrier to block off that part of his life from any new attempt on it. ""No pressure shall be exercised on prisoners to obtain information regarding the situation in their armed forces or their country"."

Braun laughed again, this time coming very close to a sinister and almost sadistic glee. "You'll find, little bird, that we have little interest in respecting the rules of the Geneva Conventions. Persons who do not exist, such as yourself, tend to have a very hard time bringing cases before courts, don't they?"

So it was going to be interrogation, then. Torture, probably; the SS did not generally hire _subtle_ people. That probably meant more to come from Leibniz, but physical torture certainly wasn't out of the question either. The Sorrow didn't think they could do much worse than he had already been through in his life, but…he didn't particularly want to go through any of that again if he didn't have to. He breathed deeply, doing his best to project an image of calm, even managing a very small smile. "I should warn you that I'm not afraid of death, Herr Braun."

The German smiled back, every bit as calmly. "Oh, I believe you – so perhaps I shouldn't threaten you with that…but everyone has _something_."

The Sorrow let that smile widen. "And what happens if I do cooperate, Herr Braun? I suppose that I will be rewarded somehow, if only by keeping my life and limbs?"

Braun chuckled. "No, no, nothing as barbaric as that, _Liebling_." He didn't like that tone of voice at all. "If you cooperate, then rather than our making a thorough and very painful search for that _something…_you would be more than welcome among our ranks, you know."

_I'm sorry, but are you listening to my German? Do you not hear the Yiddish accent I picked up from my grandmother, or the prison slang taking the place of words I never learned properly? You may not know who I am, but can you really not tell where I've come from?_ No, of course he must. The Sorrow hadn't thought it possible, but there had to be something going on that was more important than the Reich's unholy doctrine. A psychic, even just a spirit medium, was a valuable asset, and there was a sinister look on Braun's face that implied that he might not exactly be 'among the ranks', so to speak_._ No, it was his skills they needed. Someone wanted to know what the dead were up to, and they wanted to know that very, very badly. "And you expected me, Herr Braun, to willingly choose your side of the battle after subjecting me to all this? I'm disappointed. I thought that you were cleverer than that."

"I didn't say _willingly_," Braun said, continuing to smile while he grasped him firmly by the shoulder and gave it a pat that would have been reassuring under any other circumstances. "Nevertheless, I assure you that it is a far better fate than that from which we rescued you. Your talents have been wasted thus far, you know. Would you really rather serve the interests of bureaucrats who would strip you of your identity and send you to wander in the desert until you're half-dead? Greater opportunities lie ahead for you…you have come to a fork in the road, shall we say. It is entirely up to you whether you set yourself with us, or against us."

The Sorrow dropped his smile and answered immediately. "Against. Always."

"You say that now, but perhaps you will change your mind later." The German sighed and drew out the blindfold again, and then everything was again dark. "Think about it, little bird. You'll have plenty of time between here and Luxor…"


	10. What a Tangled Web We Weave

**_June 20, 1943, 6:00 am – Bizerte, Tunisia_**

_Stupid. Stupid. Stupid stupid stupid __**stupid**__. _

That voice just wouldn't get out of her head, no matter how hard the Joy tried to block it out. Yes, she had to hold herself accountable in the end for completely misjudging the situation, as much as she wanted to blame Jones for creating a diversion, but it was useless to berate herself for past mistakes; she had to _learn_ from them. What was she learning from this one, besides to not let that…idiot Sorrow out of her sight in future? _Thinking_. Gathering evidence and _thinking_ things all the way through instead of jumping to conclusions. There was acceptable risk, and then there was wild gambling, and she had to learn to differentiate the two properly or she might very well end up leading her men right into another trap – which was why she'd dispatched the Pain. It had been dangerous enough to send the Fear off by himself before, for which she was also angry at herself. _No. Don't get angry. You learned from it, so move on. You're no good if you can't think straight._ She sighed unhappily.

The Cobras' leader was now searching the house on her own, room to room. Having positively identified the bodies, she'd already carried them back out into the alley, much to Jones' apparent surprise and possible jealousy. _Yes, I can handle the load of a full-grown man or two, even as dead weight; it's amazing what spending half your life in heavy training does for you. Get used to it._ They had killed Pirelli and an Arab man who matched the description of an "A. Farouk" known to be working with the SS. She could write up the full report later, and in the meantime, the End was taking care of the photographs and basic paperwork Donovan wanted – hell, maybe Jones could make himself useful and help, once he was done with his scribbles. Now she just had to put everything together...well, maybe it would help to start with what she already knew.

Farouk's presence definitely supported her theory that the SS had hit on the idea of using Pirelli as Cobra bait, almost certainly without his knowledge. He had probably just thought he'd hired himself a pair of Italian-sympathizing native guides, while Farouk and the escapee had been leading him around the desert in circles to wear her unit down until they thought they had them too weak to fight...no, that didn't make sense. They had let up so that she'd think that she was on their trail and that her unit had the upper hand, but then just sat and waited without renewing their attack, presumably in order to keep up the appearance of being toothless. That was a dangerous game to play, letting the Cobras regain their strength…especially after all the trouble they'd had knocking them down in the first place. Himmler was crazy, sure, but he didn't hire _idiots_, and only an idiot would put such valuable assets at risk. _It's funny, because that's kind of exactly what you – __**look, that's not helping, so stop it.**_ It was a big risk, too, since their scheme had got _one_ of them shot, and it should have been both. Or _should_ it have been both? Farouk wasn't actually SS, just cooperating with them…it had probably been him messing with their instruments and such while their missing man did the heavy lifting. It was possible...no, probable...that Farouk was just a tool in the other psychic's hands - the mystery man could even have decided to let the Cobras tie up his loose ends for him, counting on his own abilities to keep himself out of danger. Yes, that seemed much more likely. God, how many layers of deception was she going to have to dig through? And if he were so certain of his escape, not to mention possibly planning to use them to get rid of Farouk for him, why had he felt the need to wear them down first?

The Joy sighed, both at the puzzle and at the lack of clues she was finding. She'd gone through every room now, and there was literally nothing. No beds, no equipment, no food, nothing but bullet casings and blood. They'd kept everything to a bare minimum in setting up this trap. Jones' piece of the map seemed to have been intended for _them_ to find, as a way of pointing them toward Bizerte, and the second there to keep them looking for Pirelli after the planned escape from that first house, but…then what? There had to be some significance to this. If it was a trap, why hadn't he just taken them all out when he had the chance? Pieces. This whole thing was just like that stupid map – all she had were pieces, just the end and the beginning, with no middle, and nothing but a bunch of nonsense on either side...why had he waited to spring the trap? It was too dangerous a gamble to make any kind of sense. They had all been battle-ready by the time she...

…no, that wasn't true. The Sorrow had only just begun to regain his psychic functioning, not even hours before she had taken him into battle. And the SS man probably _knew_ that, as powerful as he was. Maybe it…

…god. Dear god. It all made sense now, and it hadn't been a gamble at all.

The End was peering over Jones' shoulder as their wayward archaeologist stared holes into the notes in his lap. "Did you find anything?" her lieutenant said, looking up as she came out, blinking in the sun.

She threw a pebble at Jones (maybe a _little_ harder than was entirely necessary) to burst his little intellectual bubble. "No, but I know exactly what's going on, and even what that map has to do with everything. Listen up, both of you, and tell me if this makes any sense. Obviously, we walked into a trap here. Who was the bait? Pirelli. What, then, was he doing with a pair of SS guards? They weren't actually guarding him; they were there to keep the plan on track. We've already decided that much." She held up a finger. "My proposal: only one of the pretended guards was in on the _real_ plan. Our Arab friend was definitely working with the German SS until he had a fatal encounter with a cloud of hornets and several pieces of lead, remember? I think the missing one is SS, too, and he was using Farouk for his own ends without his knowing it. See, Farouk would help make him look more realistic to Pirelli, and I think he contributed some skill in telekinesis to keeping us stuck in the desert."

Jones stared at her with an eyebrow raised, rubbing the spot on his arm where she'd hit him. Wimp. "You lost me around "telekinesis."

She could have sworn he was being difficult on _purpose_. "End, tell him all about the last few weeks later. In any case, whether or not Farouk was in on the plan is entirely incidental. The important part is what that plan _was_."

"And are you going to let us in on that?" Jones said, crossing his arms.

She resisted the urge to throw another rock at him, harder. "Will you be _patient_! I'm getting there. It all leads back to one point of departure: our mystery man knew he couldn't take us down head-on, so he needed another way to get to us. However, he couldn't find a weak point, so he decided to _create_ one. The psychic interference did break up our group dynamic and individual skills somewhat, but most importantly, it completely incapacitated the Sorrow. _That_ was the weak point he chose." It was a damnably good plan, really. The kind of plan she might have come up with herself. "He wasn't afraid to wait so long for us to come and find him because he wasn't worried about us; he had a diversion planned. He used Pirelli and Farouk to draw our attention away from himself so that he could exploit the weak point he'd created, the one person he knew he'd worn down too far to resist him."

The End nodded along, looking more and more concerned. "Yes, that makes perfect sense," he said, holding out his hand. She reached down and let him squeeze it tightly in a gesture of quiet comfort. Good, at least _he_ understood what was going on here. Joy let go and reached up to run her hands through her hair, but – it wasn't loose, it was braided more neatly than she had ever managed herself, flat and tight against her scalp. Sorrow. Oh, Sorrow…she clenched her fists, unable to completely push that memory away now that it had come back to the surface. She wished to God that she hadn't said _later._ How much later was _later _going to be now? When she finally caught up to the bastard who'd done this…

"Anyway," she said, forcing herself to continue her explanation despite her voice faltering a little, "he and his fellow _Ahnenerbe_ aren't going to just sit on their prize. Maybe they'll try to get information out of the Sorrow to make it easier to find us and take us down first, or maybe they'll just keep him as their hostage until we can't help but find _them_, but one way or another…"

Jones finished the sentence for her as she trailed off, curling her hands back into fists and pushing away that counterproductive anger. "…they've got another trap all ready for the rest of you, and _he's_ the bait this time, am I right?"

"Yes, unfortunately. And that's what the map's for, I'm sure – to make sure we don't get lost along the way," the Joy said. _Fix your headspace, Joy. Get back into mission mode. _She squeezed her eyes shut tightly and exhaling hard to composed herself, regaining her officer voice and commanding demeanor when she opened them again. "He doesn't realize it yet, though, but he's picked the wrong men and woman to mess with. We'll get this done and he and his friends won't even know what hit them. Jones, have you figured out any of those hieroglyphics yet?"

"Uh - yeah, several," he said, motioning for her to come over. He seemed a little unsettled by the sudden change of pace - well, he'd just have to get used to it. "Take a look at this. All right, that one, there – that's a cobra." The Joy laughed darkly. Really, _Herr Schutzstaffel_? Really? Jones didn't seem to think it was funny, though. "The thing is, though, is that that doesn't make any sense," he said, chewing on the end of his pencil, "because the cobra is the symbol of the pharaoh, and right there – right there is Horus, the archetypical pharaoh himself. He's the son of Osiris, who in turn is right over _there_ – move your finger – yeah, there. He was known as the 'Ruler of the Land of the Living,' the _living_ being the dead who were judged worthy to enter the afterlife, you see. I don't know what _he_ has to do with all this, but he's written in here all the same. Now, if they're trying to take your group down, your Nazi friend is mixing up his symbols. He can't align himself with Horus and destroy the cobra in the same breath. It would have to be…" He flipped over a page in his notebook.

"Would have to be what?" the Joy said impatiently, grabbing the break in his little Egyptology lecture to get a word in sideways. God, he really _was _a professor.

"Set," Jones said. "The god Set, see, he was the sworn enemy of Horus, and he…Mother of God." He pointed to a symbol on the map, his eyes widening. "Right there, that's him…" He kept staring, and this time she let him think. It looked like he might be on to something now. "Uh...I think we might be on the same mission, here."

She blinked, not comprehending. "What do you mean _the same mission_, Jones?"

He stood up and stuck his notebook back in his pocket, handing the map pieces back to the End. "I'm trying to figure out what the Nazis are doing looking for an Egyptian cult, and you're trying to figure out what some Nazis with _ties_ to an Egyptian cult are doing kidnapping your soldier. I don't know about you, but that just seems like it's too much for coincidence."

The Joy hated to admit it, but he was _right_. She stood up with him and flipped her braids back over her shoulder. "That does sound pretty suspicious. All right, look, I'm going back to base to pack up – End, get rid of the bodies while you wait for the other three to come back, then bring them back to base with you. Jones, you go find some way to get us to Cairo faster than foot travel. We might even be able to overtake them if we play our cards right."

She just wished that she had more cards in her hand to play with.


	11. Family Means No One Gets Left Behind

_A/N: Well, it's finally happened: I ran out of already-written chapters to edit and post. I've plotted ahead to the end and written out bits and pieces, but the actual writing has yet to be done because I've spent basically the entire duration of this fic wrestling with illness and school. Until I get everything back on track, Necromancer of the Nile will be posting on Saturdays only. Sorry. :( Also, the "? ? ?" is a Snake Eater reference: if you save in the middle of the Sorrow's river and load the file, that's what your location will be listed as. Yes, the comparison is significant._

**_? ? ?  
_**

The Sorrow was sunk in the river up to his waist.

This time he did not try to move or look around, merely stood still and waited for the voice to come again. He did not have to wait long.

_The river of time flows so smoothly, so steadily. It is such a perfect rhythm, is it not? Yes, quite perfect. Man is born, man lives, and when his days are run, he dies. As the seasons of the year go, so go the seasons of man. Tell me, why do you sorrow over something so natural and so inevitable?_

He felt a prompting within himself to speak, and was surprised to find that, this time, he could. _Death is not natural. A spirit without a body is a stranger even to himself._

Darkness rippled across the river's surface, as though the voice was laughing a little. _An interesting view. How did you come by it?_

The Sorrow bowed his head slightly and watched the little waves pass around him. _Stranger, you ask many questions._

_Should I not ask questions? Is there any other way to learn than by posing a question and observing the response?_ A small pillar of cloud seemed to rise from the water in front of him and slowly begin to take on human form. _And similarly, there are ways to ask questions without words; do these not achieve the same end? _

He did not smile, although he considered doing so at the obvious insinuation that this cloud was the wordless question. _Then, you observe me. Why?_

The cloud continued to rise and twist, features growing clearer, more defined, until he saw himself staring back into his own eyes. _You intrigue me, sorrowful one. That is why. _His doppelgänger blinked slowly and then became solid, or at least as solid as the Sorrow himself. _Why do you so regret the natural passing of life? Is it not due only to the flow of time?_

The two Sorrows looked at each other disinterestedly. _The flow of time does not concern me, stranger; I regret the passing of life because the passing of life is the loss of potential, robbing not only the dead of their lives but also the living of their presence. I regret the passing of life because it is only human to do so._

_Ah! You are a sentimentalist, sorrowful one._

_In a way, I suppose that that is true. But is it not you who wishes to see the river of time change its course?_

_Yes, and why should I not? Are there not many possibilities, should that river double back upon itself?_ Before his eyes, the second Sorrow began to slowly change from a man of thirty-three to a man of forty…forty-five…fifty…his hair lengthened, shortened, lengthened again, purified from dull grey to white, began to recede further toward the crown of his head. The wrinkles on his face deepened and became like canyons, narrow canyons worn down by rivers of tears. His shoulders, still square, nevertheless began to sink down toward the water. And then a sharp wind blew, and the shadow-flesh was gone, a skeleton alone standing before him. _Behold, sorrowful one, the passing of your entire life within seconds. You see how easily I have killed you._

He closed his eyes so as not to see that grinning skull before the splashing sounds of bones disconnecting and falling into the river reached his ears. _You have only sped time up, stranger. You have not reversed it._

_Open your eyes._

The Sorrow opened his eyes, and found that the bones were already flying back together and the flesh knitting itself whole again. Grunting, his other self straightened up and then lurched one grisly step forward before the life came back into its eyes, and then – his life again, only this time played backwards. White to grey, grey to brown, fifty, forty, thirty, and now they were going into the true past, a broad-shouldered man beginning to shrink down into a coat-hanger of an adolescent and finally a frightened little boy whose head was getting dangerously close to the surface of the water. The Sorrow instinctively reached out to try to pull this child out of harm's way, but the shadow dissolved beneath his touch, and the voice laughed. _What would you not give for this power, sorrowful one? To resurrect the dead and give them back their years, so that they could live again and fight another day?_

The Sorrow had no qualms in replying immediately. _That power is not mine to have, stranger. It is not anyone's to have. The mysteries of life and death are for God alone._ A strange conviction for someone who talked to the dead, perhaps, but nevertheless it was one he had never let go of. Something had to sustain you, even if it was only the hope that there was a Heaven still to come after the Purgatory you saw all around.

Another laugh came out of the darkness, which was slowly closing in once more on one last question from his mysterious conversationalist. **_Whose_**_ god, sorrowful one?_

**_June 20, 1943, 11:00 am – Bizerte, Tunisia_**

Indy sat on the top of the open truck that he'd…uh, borrowed, throwing rocks up at the wooden shutters he had been told to throw them at. He wasn't getting any response so far, but that was all right – it gave him time to think about the case. It was impossible to know what exactly was going on without knowing the exact meaning of that hieroglyphic writing, but he did have a few symbols definitely identified that might make some sense. "Osiris". "Set". "Horus". "Cobra". "River". …all right, so they didn't make any sense without the context – but at least he'd been able to prove to the Joy that he was good for _something_. Maybe that would keep him from getting beaten up too badly by her soldiers, all of whom looked quite ready to stomp him into the ground if he so much as opened his mouth the wrong way. Jones could handle himself in a fight, sure, but these guys were completely different from anyone he'd ever seen before.

Finally the shutters swung out, right before he was about to throw up another chunk of cobblestone. Good thing, too, because hitting the, uh…oh god, which one was that…'the Pain' just seemed to be asking for trouble. "Where have you been? We've been waiting for you all…_that's_ what you brought?" he said, leaning out the window. It was impossible to see his expression under that unsettling mask, but it sounded like he was none too happy. "There's nowhere to hide in that."

"It took me this long it took to find anything left that would even run," Indiana said, glaring. "I filled up the tank and stole a few petrol tanks while I was at it, too. Do you want it, or not?"

The Pain sighed. "Yeah, we'll take it. Joy's itching to get out of here, and we can probably rig up a cover for that open back."

"Well, I'm glad it passes inspection," he said, climbing down from his post. "Cab seats two or three, everyone else and all the gear should fit just fine in the bed. I brought mine, so whenever you're ready –" A duffel bag hit the truck bed next to him, making him jump reflexively and almost fall out. Somebody laughed up above.

"I _said, _don't antagonize him!" Indy heard the Joy yell from within. "Goddammit, and I thought it was hard getting _you_ all to play nicely together!"

"I wasn't doing anyth-ow! All right all right all right I'll be nice now please stop pulling on my ear that hurts!" The spidery one – uh, the Fear – scrambled up on the windowsill and made a leap down into the truck, landing on the bag. "She is such a mother sometimes," he grumbled, jumping down onto the cobblestones and rubbing the side of his head gingerly.

"Is that a bad thing?"

"Only when she's mad at you," the Fear said. "_You_ should be fine, though. She seems to have decided all of a sudden that you're too valuable to smack around." Sheesh, if that tone was any more bitter, he'd be able to taste it. Jealous, much?

"Hey, Fear, catch!"

The Fear jumped up and neatly caught another bag sailing overhead. "Fury, _idiota_! What do you think you're doing, tossing the liquor around like that?" he yelled back, wedging the bag firmly where the bottles clinking inside couldn't get broken.

"Hey, you caught it, didn't you?" the Fury laughed, putting in his own appearance at the window. "Knew you would. The good stuff's gone already, anyway. I can't _wait_ til we get to Cairo."

"You wouldn't know the _good stuff_ if it hit you in the head, as it might have just done to me just now!"

"I _would_. And the next time we find a bar, I'm buying you something just to prove it!"

"Both of you stop that, or Fury, I swear to God you'll be the next one out that window! And stop throwing things around, the alcohol is _not_ the most important breakable thing in here. Jones, Fear, get up here and start carrying." The Joy pushed the man aside and leaned out the window, looking the truck over with a frown. "All you could find, huh? I guess it'll do, we've been waiting _more_ than long enough. They could be halfway across Libya by now if they've found a good road." She disappeared back into the room, yelling at somebody else about watching where he was going.

"Oh, yes, you're very welcome, Joy. So glad you like it," Indy said, rolling his eyes a little as he started to walk for the door. "I don't suppose that it would kill you to be a _little_ more grateful." He was stopped in his tracks by a hand shooting out and grabbing his upper arm. He turned to face the Fear. "Hey, what do you think you're –"

"Keep your _ssssssmart_ mouth shut," he hissed, an unnaturally long tongue flickering out between his lips like a snake's. Indiana shuddered at the resemblance and tried to pull away, but to no avail. "Nobody _talksssss_ about her like that, ever, not if I have anything to _sssssay_ about it. _Sssssso_ shut the hell up, _Jonessssss_, or as _sssssoon_ _asssss_ you fall out of her favor, you'll have a lot more to worry about than the Nat-_sssssssisssss_. Got it?"

"I got it, I got it," Jones said, more paralyzed than he wanted to admit by the rush of fear brought on by the unexpected hissing and forked tongue in his face. "No more sarcasm, I – I promise. I'll, uh…I…" He trailed off into some mumbling that was incoherent even to _him_. Those hypnotic yellow eyes were not helping the snake impression at all.

"_Good._" The Fear let go of him and shook out his arm casually, the joints bending all the wrong way ohhhhh god. Indy kept his eyes fixed firmly on the ceiling as the two of them went in and climbed to the upper level.

"What did you do to him, Fear," the Fury said flatly as he handed off a crate to the other Cobra. "C'mon, don't try to pretend you didn't, it's all over his face."

"Just a little scare, but he deserved it," the Fear said indignantly.

"I'm not _scared_," Jones said angrily, grabbing one of the bags sitting by the door as he tried to shake off that fear response. "And I wasn't before, either!"

"Yeah, right," the Fear snorted. "Anyway, he was smart-talking the _comandante_. I couldn't let him get off free with that one, could I? She would have slapped him herself if she'd been there."

"Then I suggest that next time you let the Joy take care of that herself, Fear," the End said as he walked by with a bag slung over his shoulder. "We are meant to be working as _partners_ with Dr. Jones, and that is not something that one does to a partner." The old man to the rescue again? Indy was going to have to spend more time hanging around _him_.

The Fury joined them on their way down the narrow stairs. "Well, hell, End, he pulls that on the _rest_ of us all the time. What's so different?"

"He's not one of _us_," the Fear said forcefully. "It's different with family."

Jones really needed to learn when to keep his mouth shut. "Family, huh?"

"Absolutely," the Fury said. "You've got Granddad right here –"

"I'm flattered."

"– and Joy's the mother, of course. I'm the uncle who's a bad influence on everybody, Fear's the annoying kid brother –"

"I am only two years younger than you, shut up."

"Shut up yourself. Anyway, Pain is the dad because he's so protective of everybody, and Sorrow is the black-sheep cousin because he's…well, he's not really military, and he's also just kind of weird, to be honest._ Ow!_"

"Be nice to your 'cousin', or I'll tell him what you said when we find him again and he'll unleash some kind of unholy terror on you," the Joy said, throwing the book she had just hit the Fury with into the cab of the truck. "Was that everything, Lieutenant?" _Well, I'll be, they actually have some semblance of order in this unit. Coulda fooled me._

"Yes, it was, Commander," the End said, taking a look back up the stairs. "I did a double-check before I brought my part of the load down, and it's all clear."

"Then let's _go_." _Itching to go_ was definitely an understatement, judging by her expression. "I'll drive the first leg, and somebody needs to be sleeping so we can keep driving through the night if we have to. No, make that Fear – you sleep. That way we don't need headlights and they can't see us coming. And secure everything down, the sand's going to be flying. You lot know where to find the goggles. Well, don't just stand there staring, Jones! Come _on!_"

...well, at least it wasn't a camel.


	12. Something To Talk About

_A/N: Yep, two Indy chapters in a row. I didn't realize until I was almost done and by then it was _**_just_**_ a little bit late to rewrite all 2,000 words. We'll hear the Joy's side of things soon enough, promise._

_**June 21, 1943, 3:34 PM – Libya**_

"So explain this to me one more time," the Joy said, staring at Indiana across the back of the open truck they were travelling in. "I get that Osiris is the lord of the dead and all that, but what the hell is with Horus and Set, again?"

Indy sighed. This was the third time he'd told this story; she always seemed to keep getting distracted in the middle. Yesterday she had been consumed with plans and double-checking _everything _(he'd never seen such a control freak) and catching naps in between switching off duty behind the wheel, but today she'd finally got around to questioning him further about what he'd gathered so far from the hieroglyphs. Not that it seemed to be helping her much. "All right, all right. Just – understand I'm not really into Egypt, okay?" he said _yet again._ "I've been doing mostly South American stuff for the last few years, Inca excavations down in Peru and that kind of thing. So I'm not exactly up on the details, and it might not be –"

"_Just get on with it._"

Jones tried not to look too frustrated, given the look he was getting from the Fear, with whom he, the Joy, and the Pain were currently sharing the truck bed while the Fury and the End had the cab. "Fine. So Set and Osiris are fighting for who gets to be the king of Egypt, and Set kills Osiris and cuts his body into some highly significant number of pieces so that he can't be resurrected. At least, that's _one_ version of the story. There must be a hundred others, but that just happens to be the most prevalent." He sighed. "Anyway – Osiris' faithful wife Isis collects all the pieces that she can and puts them back together, then revives him with magic. But she can only keep him alive for so long, and all she has time to do is conceive their son Horus before he dies again. Then Horus grows up to take his father's place as the mortal enemy of –"

"I thought gods couldn't die," the Joy interrupted.

"_Everyone_ can die in Egyptian mythology," Indy said, getting really irritated. She'd also said that the last three times. "Death isn't considered to be the end in the old religion, just a passing on to a different phase of life. That's why Osiris is the god of both life and death, and the one associated with the resurrection of the dead into their new place in the afterlife. He was responsible for the annual floods, the fertility of the earth, and making sure life and death went on as they should, and he was held in a place of high honor by the ancient Egyptians. That's the most important thing to take away from the Osiris myth, so do you get _that_ part now, at least?" …she didn't look like she got it. She looked like she was thinking.

"Death isn't the end, huh?" she said, leaning back and looking up at the cloudless desert sky. "I wonder…"

Well, that was new. Maybe something had finally sunk in. "Wonder what?"

"These Nazis, you think they're looking for a cult of Set, right?" the Joy said, looking back at him. "What's Set in charge of, since Osiris gets to be the ruler of the afterlife?"

"Uh…" What a thing to forget. He groped around in his memory until something finally surfaced. "…well, Set's not really in charge of anything much, at least not in the main religion. According to most of the myths, Horus kicked his ass so many times that the other gods finally declared Horus the winner and the first pharaoh of Egypt, and Set just kind of stayed in the background sulking after that. He did get to look after Upper Egypt, you know, the headwaters of the Nile, but that was about it. He's got a few temples around Luxor and a couple other places that're still standing."

"But you just said he's not really the god of anything," the Joy said, sounding both argumentative and curious at once. "Aside from respecting him as the lord of the land, why worship him if his mortal enemy Horus was so much more powerful?"

Jones considered for a moment – that wasn't a bad question, actually. The girl was sharp when she was actually listening, he'd say that much for her. If only he could get about twenty more of her in his classes…it was refreshing to be lecturing to someone who _wasn't_ more interested in drooling over him personally than in the lesson he was giving. "Well…you turn to the "bad guy" because you don't like the way the "good guy" is running things, you know? It's human nature to go with whoever you think can do the most good for you, and you align your morals and myths accordingly. So everybody else might think of Set as the enemy, but I…would _think_, anyway, that a Set cultist would think of him as the hero, or at least on a neutral ground with Osiris and Horus. They might even downplay the whole struggle for pharaohship, or cut it out of the mythology entirely."

"So, somebody rebelling against…the natural order of life and death? Would that be about right?" she said with an inquisitive, thoughtful look.

"…no, not really," Indiana sighed. "It's not that simple at _all_, Joy. Weren't you listening? I just _said_ that you would realign your ideas and mythology to cast your favored god in the light of…" Wait. Rebelling against the natural order of life and death? It might not fit the reality, but…the Nazis weren't exactly known for being realistic, were they? He suddenly straightened up and leaned in towards her. "Hey, you called that 'Sorrow' guy a medium, didn't you? Mind cluing me in a little on what he's like?" Indy had pretty much gotten a feel for everyone else on her team, as much as they disliked him (the End excepted), but the Sorrow was still a mystery – a mystery that might have something to do with more than just a snake trap, given the turn this conversation was taking. He still didn't really believe in stuff like séances and ghosts and all that, but he couldn't think of much more "rebelling against the natural order" than the idea of summoning up the dead.

"He's…" A cloud fell over the Joy's face, and she seemed to withdraw just as suddenly as he had pushed forward. "He's a spirit medium, yes. He can make contact with the spirits of the dead, sort of – see across the divide to the 'other side', I suppose. That's why he's called "The Sorrow," because he's always surrounded by the sorrowful dead, on and off the battlefield." She reached into an inside pocket under her jacket and drew out a small notebook as she spoke, undoing the knot in its string closure with slightly shaking hands. "I'm not sure what else to say, beyond that. He's very observant, has a good measure of extrasensory perception, and a little precognition. What's most important is that he has a very strong mind after dealing with so much pain for so long, so he shouldn't be in too much danger from our mystery psychic – mentally, at least. He may not be able to go on the offensive, but I've never seen anything that could take his defenses down." She let the notebook fall open and handed him something that had been tucked between its pages. "There, that's him. You ought to know what he looks like, for the actual rescue."

Indy had been expecting a photograph, probably one too fuzzy to make out any real detail, but it was a full-body drawing in color. "It's very good; who did it?" he asked as he scrutinized it and worked on committing the figure to memory. Early thirties, maybe, but too grey and tired-looking to get a real fix on his age; stocky from the waist up and broad across the shoulders and chest, strong chin and cheekbones, deeply set eyes; from the waist down, narrow hips and long skinny legs that made him look less like a soldier and more like an invalid.

She shrugged, keeping her eyes set through her protective goggles on the swirling sand the truck's wheels were kicking up. "I had someone in the agency copy photographs of everyone, that's all. It's a little over a year old, but…he hasn't changed much, at least on the outside. Gained a little muscle, is all, maybe a bit grimmer, maybe a little greyer. Battle is hard on him; I try to keep him out of it when I can."

Indiana handed the drawing back to her and she gave it a lingering look before putting it quickly away. All right, he wasn't an _idiot_. "So he's your boyfriend or something, huh?"

"_No!_ Nothing like it," the Joy snapped, looking like she wanted to slap him across the face. Sheesh, and _gingers_ were supposed to be the short-tempered ones…but then, he'd never had much luck with blondes anyways. "There's no more between us than there is between anyone else. Don't talk about things you don't understand, Jones. It makes you look like even more of a fool than you are."

He held up his hands despite his urge to snap back at the insult, not wanting to get a gun in his face again. "All _right_, I get it. Just another of your men."

"Exactly," she said, tossing her braids back over her shoulder carelessly and regaining her composure flawlessly.

…the Joy was an _excellent_ liar, and he'd actually have believed her if he hadn't been paying such close attention to her mannerisms in the last few minutes. "You're just acting awfully strange all of a sudden, but I'm _sure_ there's a perfectly logical explanation for that," he said, a little more sarcastically than he'd meant to.

"There is," she said, suddenly irritable. "I've had a grand total ten hours of sleep in the last three days, and I am _so sorry_ if I'm acting a little "strange" because of it. In fact, I think it would probably be best for everyone if I went and got some sleep now. Move over, Pain, I need the bedroll." The giant switched places with her silently and obediently, laying one hand gently on her shoulder as they passed each other, but she shook him off. "And don't wake me up unless we're getting shot at or something's on fire," the Joy said as she laid down and pulled up a sheet to block out the searing, blinding desert sun at its zenith. Damn Amun-Ra. "That is an _order_."

"Yes ma'am…" Jones said, shaking his head amid the chorus going up from his traveling companions. "_Да, Командер_." "Duly noted, _comandante_." "Please do sleep, you need it." "Absolutely, I have been saying all day that you're pushing yourself too hard. Rest well, Joy."

An awkward and vaguely antagonistic silence fell over the group along with the end of that conversation, the grinding of the motor and tires on sand still almost too loud to allow for thought. Jones was fine with this, since it meant no one was seething at him for ticking off their leader so badly, and so after a few minutes it was the Pain, observing him from his new seat directly across from him, who spoke up first. "So…do you drink, Dr. Jones?"

Would you look at that, he was _Doctor_ Jones now to at least _one_ other person. And wasn't that the stupidest question he'd ever heard? "Absolutely."

"Vodka?"

"Anything."

The Pain looked slightly uncertain. "Vodka hand-distilled by the Fury?"

Indiana gave him a very certain look in response. "_Anything._"

"Well, it's your brain cells," the Pain sighed, digging around in the bags and coming up with a smallish glass bottle that he handed over to Indy. These guys really did know what they were doing, didn't they? This was the perfect size for an improvised weapon – blunt-force, broken edges, Molotov cocktail – as well as for drinking just enough to improve the mood. Someone had more than likely put _way_ too much work into picking those bottles out. "But…you might want to dilute it, just in case."

"I think I'll be fine," he said, popping the cork out and drinking a little as best as he could with the bumpy road. Damn, it really _was_ strong.

"Seriously, by the way," the Fear said, speaking up for the first time with his arms still folded and a glare still fixed on Jones, "Joy having any kind of boyfriend is the most ridiculous suggestion I've ever heard. It's not her style, especially getting mixed up with one of us. She'd never, ever make a stupid mistake like that, so drop it and leave her alone, _¿me entiendes?_"

"_Yo entiendo_," Indy replied easily while turning away so the other man couldn't see him rolling his eyes. To completely bastardize Shakespeare, the lady most definitely protested too much. Also, he still wasn't sure why they had a Spaniard on the team…well, his accent _was_ pretty weird, so it was possible he was a naturalized American or Frenchman or something of that sort. He was just going to have to accept, he was quickly realizing, that it was going to be absolutely impossible to figure out the Cobras. "How long until we get to Cairo, anyway?"

"We'll get there when we _get there_," Joy snapped from under her sheet. "Now shut up and let me sleep."

The Pain shrugged at Jones apologetically. "Sorry. She's frustrated," he said quietly. "Nothing to do with you, really. I haven't seen her like this in…practically ever, really."

Indy decided to be blunt. "I'm sure. So...you and me - are we friends now, or what?"

The soldier paused before replying. "No. Not friends. But if _she_ trusts you, then I'll trust you, too. Is that good enough?"

"Well, it's more than I get from most people, so I guess so," he muttered. "Well, here's to not biting each other's heads off," he said, raising the bottle of vodka.

The Pain pulled out a bottle of his own and raised it in response. "To not biting each other's heads off."

"WHAT PART OF 'SHUT UP AND LET ME SLEEP' DID YOU NOT UNDERSTAND?!" Indiana pulled a face and took a full swig of his vodka to dull the effects of the Joy's full-on shriek. He had the sinking feeling that this was going to be a very, very long ride.


	13. The Lion's Den

_A/N: Apologies for my absence! I've been extremely ill for the last….however long it's been…I really don't want to think about it. *makes a face*…anyway, between that and school and everything else (I've also been sucked into Tumblr RP and am currently abroad), I haven't been able to so much as look at this story in a very long time. Things are better, though, and the updates should be __**slightly**__ more regular from here on out (most likely "more regular" as in "coming at all," sorry – I still have a thesis paper to finish before I can graduate, which means it's also grad-school application time.) This is a particularly long chapter, but absolutely integral to understanding everything that comes both before and after it._

**_June 24, 1943, 1:00 pm – Luxor, Egypt_**

Being blindfolded for days on end, now, had only sharpened the Sorrow's other senses, and in fact he was surprised that they had bothered. It wasn't as if there was anything for him to look at, and surely Leibniz, at the very least, would know that anyone's mind grew stronger without extra information pouring into it. Despite what Braun had said about considering cooperation with the Nazis, he hadn't even been allowed to _think_ until only a few hours ago, as if he were truly removed from the world around him – and that had only strengthened him all the more. Certainly, it was good practice under normal circumstances to disorient a prisoner, but he was hardly disoriented now. The psychic box hadn't budged, but he could tell just by his normal senses that he was alone in a room, slightly drafty – drafty because there was a light dusting of sand under his feet and because it was much warmer than a normal closed room would be, and alone because there was no noise, not even breathing. He still had his hands bound, behind his back now, but he was still able to use his capacity of reason.

This was a completely counterproductive move for his captors, unless…unless they _needed_ him stronger. He didn't like that idea at all, now that he was able to process it. He'd always worried about exactly that kind of scenario, word getting out that so much of the Cobras' success depended on someone with skills like his. Not that he thought he was any more important than anyone else, no! but – he was probably the one most likely to be taken seriously as a useful oddity. The others were more dangerous as a team than as individuals, but he was a valuable asset all by himself. He'd barely been with the Cobra Unit for a year now, and the Soviets had already spent the last three months complaining about wanting him back. More research. More study. Possible replication and weaponization, if only they could figure out what 'made him tick' (that was the correct English expression, right?)…the Joy had rescued him from an American laboratory to bring him into the unit, and God knew he didn't want to go back. Ever. _Ever_. And if the Ukrainians had been bad, the Germans were bound to be worse. But they probably wouldn't take him for testing…they would probably want to take him as a weapon…he remembered thinking something like that already before everything had gone black. They wouldn't get him, though. Never. He had options. Suicide was a last resort, but hardly an impossible one…and of course he could always attempt escape first, although that could possibly be suicide in and of itself. He had decided long ago that the best way was poison, but he had no way of knowing whether he still had the L-7 tablet on his person. But if it wasn't, any sharp enough object…

His plans, however, were cut off by voices in what seemed to be a room or hallway outside of his own. "All right, so the Egyptian's cooperating and ready to go, that's one. What about the Russian, here?"

The Sorrow didn't know the first speaker, but the next was familiar. Braun. "I've talked to him about it, but he doesn't seem willing to go easily. It could take time."

"Braun, we don't _have_ time. I just got a report in from Cairo and we're going to have the whole damn lot of them on our hands soon. Did you really leave that _obvious_ of a trail?" _The whole damn lot of them. _He wasn't talking about – no – _was_ he?

"Of course I didn't! We were careful to cover everything up, I don't know how they're following, especially not without _him_. Central must have misjudged their capabilities."

"Well, either way, I don't think we're prepared to handle them. We'll have to dispatch Special Tactics for an intervention. They can't reach this facility, or everything will be lost."

Braun laughed. "Walther, you really think Special Tactics has a fighting chance out there? They almost caught us twice, and that was after Leibniz took out their defenses; it is _impossible_ to take them on as a group without controlling every variable, I'm telling you. If we're taking them on anywhere, it _should_ be here."

The other man – Walther – sighed. "Look, if they're that much of a threat then is he really _that_ essential? The necromancer, I understand, but why do we need a medium? Special Tactics already has their little anti-Cobra thing running, so I say we get rid of him and dump the body far enough north that they won't suspect our true location. One down and five to go, they'll like that. Special Tactics gets a head start on Operation Mongoose, Central gets good news on the same, and _we_ don't get overrun by this all-powerful 'Cobra Unit' and revealed to the entire damn -"

"You're _really _going to second-guess Heine's judgment on this?" Braun cut in sharply. "He knows what he's doing. Don't forget your position."

"Mine _and_ yours."

"That shows how much _you_ know. When this is done with, I'll be promoted, and then I'll be your superior. How do you like that?"

The Sorrow left them for the moment to their petty squabble over rank and position. The other Cobras were already in Cairo? Of course, he had no idea what day it was, but – not too much time could have possibly passed if they had made it to Cairo. You could only wait so long to follow a trail in the desert, or even the Fear would lose it. And forget the fact that they were in Cairo, they were following the trail at _all_? He couldn't exactly say that he was surprised, but he didn't like the idea of it, either. They'd be coming in completely blind, unless there happened to be something useful on that scrap of paper the Joy had brought back from their failed attempt at capturing Pirelli, and it sounded like no matter what was decided, his friends would be in for a fight that they might not be able to win. The Sorrow had every faith in them, of course, but…

He cut himself off again and tuned back in to the conversation outside. Something important had just registered on the subconscious level of his mind. "…is no point in raising the dead if you don't know _which ones to raise_, that's why," Braun was saying smugly.

"We have our own people for that, Braun, and I think we ought to recommend to the Commander that we use them instead."

"You _just don't get it_, do you?" he said, sounding exasperated. "If we do it this way, everyone wins, even Special Tactics. You can't just waste a tool like this, _ünterMensch _or no. If we get him to cooperate, that's still one Cobra less for them to deal with, and if not –"

"_Then_ can we do the sensible thing and kill him?"

"That's for Heine to decide. Anyway, I think I've figured out how to do it. Leibniz was able to get a few things before the Russian shut down on him, and if I play my cards right, he won't have a _choice_ but to play along." _Leibniz was able to get a few things. _The Sorrow wanted to swear aloud. What things? How much? What did Braun think he had hanging over his head, exactly? He didn't want to think about that. It didn't sound like he had betrayed anything, but with a man like Braun it would be impossible to tell. Damn, damn, damn…and _raising the dead_? He was starting to get a feel for what was going on here. Nazi occultists, of course, and "the Egyptian"…he was presumably the same person as "the necromancer". He suddenly remembered something from the un-dreams he had been having before Leibniz had blacked him out.

_…What would you not give for this power, sorrowful one? To resurrect the dead and give them back their years, so that they could live again and fight another day?..._

The Sorrow had little doubt now who had created that space and with whom he had been talking. And now they were supposed to be working together for the Nazis' purposes, that much seemed evident as well. This was just getting worse and worse. Raising the dead…and they needed him to reach out to their spirits, to tell which ones were the most important and locate their bodies. As much as he wanted to sabotage it, he knew that he'd almost certainly be shot if he tried anything, especially given how hard Walther was pushing for it now. Oh – there was a rattling at the door – it creaked, swinging open, and then closed again with a loud _clang_. Footsteps drew nearer and then once again he found his blindfold lifted to reveal Herr Braun smirking at him. Not a good sign.

"Welcome to Luxor, Specialist Tyannikov," Braun said, folding his arms behind his back with an even smugger look. The Sorrow felt a cold sweat start to break out on his brow. How could he – no – it must have been when Leibniz was first poking around – or, for all he knew, the professor could have read his memories entirely while he was in suspension. _Boz'_, if he had betrayed his comrades, however unwillingly…even death would be too good a fate for him. No, don't think about that now. Focus, Mik – Sorrow. _Sorrow_. You're _The Sorrow _now, nothing more. Focus, Sorrow.

"I'm sorry," he said with a half-laugh, the best he could manage, "but I don't have the slightest idea what you're talking about. Didn't I tell you that I'm a man who doesn't exist? I _have_ no name."

"Funny…that's not what Leibniz turned up when he was poking around your subconscious," the German said lightly, moving to take a seat on the bench beside him. "Mikhail Ivanovich, isn't it? Formerly of Krasnoyarsk in Siberia, aged…oh, about thirty-three, isn't it?" The Sorrow bit his lip hard, trying to stay calm despite the fact that he knew, he knew _everything_…wait. No, that wasn't necessarily true. All Braun would have needed to find out what he'd said so far would have been the dates of his internment at Dachau, or the fact that he'd spent several years being studied and near-tortured in an Ukrainian laboratory known for keeping documents on everything there was _to_ document. It was still possible that he was the only person Leibniz had been able to collect data on, and that Braun was going to bluff by trying to make him think that he had data on the rest of his unit as well. The Sorrow had never been more thankful that the Joy had never allowed anyone to share the details of their former lives…there was very little that _could_ be found there if Leibniz had been able to break down his defenses. All he had to go on was personalities, fighting styles, and general ploys, but nothing that would be easy to turn against them. Joy seemed practically born to think on her feet, so even if they tried to mount a defense or offense based on that information, she'd find a way around it for sure. He would have begun to relax a little, but Braun was uncomfortably close now.

"And you care about your friends quite a lot, don't you?" Braun said, continuing conversationally. "It would be quite the tragedy if anything should happen to them, I'm sure." The threat was far too vague to be anything to worry about. Really, it was seeming more and more like the Nazi didn't _really _know anything all, and was bluffing, hoping that he'd reveal something that he thought Braun knew anyway, or that he'd agree to –

"Especially your commander, I imagine. She really is a sweet girl deep down, isn't she?"

He stopped breathing. Joy…how much did he know? What exactly had Leibniz been "poking around" in? Thankfully he knew less about her than about everyone else put together, but if he'd seen their conversation however-many-mornings-ago…_he won't have a choice but to play along_…

"Oh, don't be shy," Braun said, pinching his cheek with a grin. Damn it – was he – he was _blushing_… "And no need to cry, either, _Liebling_. She's coming to rescue you – isn't that wonderful news? - and everyone else as well. Poor things, they just don't know what they're getting themselves into, but it's a noble gesture all the same, don't you agree?" The Sorrow remained silent, both from horror and reason. Give a man enough rope and eventually he'll hang himself with it…the longer and harder Braun tried to get him to cooperate, the more he'd spill about what he really knew and planned. "There are two ways to stop them, of course. We can kill and capture – in fact, I can think of several who would be more valuable alive than dead, especially if we could torture them for information…the old man, perhaps, and definitely the girl – or…and I believe this would be much more preferable to you, am I right?...we can merely impede their progress. It all depends on your 'yes' or 'no'. Doesn't it feel refreshing to be so important for once?"

_For once._ Would you stop that already? I'm fine just as I am, thanks. Empty flatteries and insinuations that you'll appreciate me more than even Joy ever would aren't going to help your case at all. Nevertheless…

Oh, God, he was absolutely lost without her; making his own decisions wasn't exactly one of his strong points. But the overriding imperative was preservation of his unit at any cost. The usual orders of 'leave no man behind' did not, could not, apply to himself right now. The Sorrow lowered his head in dread of the words hovering on his lips. "All right. You win, Herr Braun. I accept your terms."

The Nazi gripped his shoulder firmly, smiling like a bear having caught its first prey after the winter's sleep. "There, was that so hard? You won't regret this, I promise, Specialist Tyannikov." (He cringed a little at hearing his former name again, and hearing it like _this_.) "I just need one thing from you to seal our bargain: proof that you really are as powerful as Leibniz believes."

Proof…? That didn't sound good at all, but he no longer had any real say in his own actions. "Of course."

Braun waved carelessly at the door, and – within a few seconds, there was a gunshot in what sounded like the next room over. His blood seemed to turn cold and his stomach contract at the obvious significance. _Oh my God. They've killed a man on account of me, just on account of me. No matter what I do, there's blood on my hands…_ Moments later, he could feel the newly-rent soul thrashing about in confusion and fear, automatically drawing him in. He could only barely hear the words spoken next to him, "Tell me, medium, what do you see?"

"Feel –" he felt his lips move, but didn't hear the words themselves. "I feel…can hear the man you've had killed. But he can't speak yet and won't move close enough to be seen. He wanted to die, but…" Torture, the recently-ex-prisoner had been tortured for weeks now. The pain was obvious on the surface. "Only to end it. His suffering. But he's too distraught to be spoken to; he's not sure whether or not to move on, or how."

"Mhm. Take your time. Give me details as they come to you, as many details as you can."

Eventually the spirit realized there was someone there he could turn to for help, and the details came. John Angelo, an American spy discovered a month ago within Braun's very company under the assumed name of Carranzi. Forty-three, fluent in English, Italian, and German, a dedicated atheist. Hence his extreme confusion at still being present after death. He didn't consciously speak, but vaguely sensed the words pouring from his mouth all the same. After what seemed like all eternity, the German seemed satisfied, shaking him roughly to bring him back to full consciousness. "Enough. You've passed, my friend, and very well. Tomorrow, you meet your colleague and receive your debriefing – but for now, rest here. Continue to build your strength, and prepare to work harder than I'm sure you ever have before."

When Braun had gone, the Sorrow turned back to Angelo with a sigh, returning to the support role he was well-used to playing for both living and dead. And as always in both cases, so many questions for which he didn't have answers. In the end the dead man's spirit decided it was best to continue on immediately, the better to search for potential answers as soon as possible. _Again, I'm sorry this had to happen to you. Best of luck, and I hope you find what you seek. It only takes courage to find the path again; simply take the first step and you'll be on your way._ And then he was alone again, with only his thoughts and his worries for company. Wherever the others truly were right now, he could only hope that they hadn't got into any serious trouble yet.


End file.
